The true story of June Spencer, debutante and volunteer ambulance driver in Chelsea during the Blitz, told through her remarkable diaries.
June Spencer is set to follow the time-worn path of a debutante, but when war comes to London she volunteers to drive an ambulance through the bomb-strewn streets of Chelsea.
June’s first-hand accounts to paint a vivid picture of the contrasts of London wartime life–her accounts range from driving through the streets while under bombardment, to the aftermath of the destruction of the Café de Paris, to grand balls and parties in Lindsey House on the banks of the Thames.
June befriended the future novelist Mary Wesley at Boskenna in Cornwall and encouraged her to ‘write a book about her friends’–decades later Wesley wrote The Camomile Lawn. June also numbered writers Patrick O’Brian and A.P. Herbert, artists Augustus John and Tom Dugdale, National Trust luminary James Lees-Milne and actor Constance Cumming among her friends and acquaintances.
Naomi Clifford paints a compelling picture of what was really going on behind the façade of stoicism, spotlighting the complex emotional responses to the Blitz and to service on the home front.
June Spencer is set to follow the time-worn path of a debutante, but when war comes to London she volunteers to drive an ambulance through the bomb-strewn streets of Chelsea.
June’s first-hand accounts to paint a vivid picture of the contrasts of London wartime life–her accounts range from driving through the streets while under bombardment, to the aftermath of the destruction of the Café de Paris, to grand balls and parties in Lindsey House on the banks of the Thames.
June befriended the future novelist Mary Wesley at Boskenna in Cornwall and encouraged her to ‘write a book about her friends’–decades later Wesley wrote The Camomile Lawn. June also numbered writers Patrick O’Brian and A.P. Herbert, artists Augustus John and Tom Dugdale, National Trust luminary James Lees-Milne and actor Constance Cumming among her friends and acquaintances.
Naomi Clifford paints a compelling picture of what was really going on behind the façade of stoicism, spotlighting the complex emotional responses to the Blitz and to service on the home front.
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