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A Wartime Romance - overview

A journey of romance, reunion and a transformed reality in the aftermath of conflict, this was the actuality of hundreds of couples' experience in the 1940s. Ray and Joan married six months before Ray, serving in the RAF, was posted to India. Recently discovered letters sent by Ray to his new bride, Joan, in Brentford, bring into focus the post-war struggles of demobilised service personnel who returned home to find housing shortages, food rationing, a scarcity of jobs and, in some cases, broken relationships. Post-war domestic problems, particularly those of newly married couples, have sometimes been overlooked in the literature surrounding World War Two. Interviews with children of the post-war era provide additional insight into the period which, since now on the borders of living memory, are especially important to record.

So what was the reality of post-war Britain? In many cases disappointment, demoralisation, defeat and despair. But hope sprang eternal: their anticipation of future prosperity drove this generation forward into the fifties and beyond as many of us born in the post-war era can testify.

Also see a photo of Joan's mother, Emily Alice Beardsworth, on the Great West Road in 1924.

Page published February 2014; updated January 2019