Norah Hodgkinson, Alison Twells‘ great aunt, left a suitcase of letters, photographs and pocket diaries spanning seventy-one years.

This blog explores Norah’s diaries from 1938, when she was a twelve year-old scholarship girl from a working-class family in an East Midlands village, through the course of the Second World War. Through Norah’s eyes we see a family, a community and a nation at war. As she records her thoughts, hopes and loves, as well as her daily life, we see something of what it was like to be a modern girl in the middle decades of a century that saw unprecedented changes in women’s lives.

Intriguingly for me, Norah’s diaries contain a mystery, a story which begins with a pair of navy seaboot socks knitted for the war effort in 1940; and inside which, before they were handed in to the lady from the WRVS, Norah, then 15, cheekily slipped her name and school address. The socks were picked up from … read more. (Link)