“This is a remarkable diary. I have never read another quite like it. The reader furthermore is assisted by Dr. Ryle’s introduction and useful commentary. It makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the social experience of the war, the history of the British left, the history of adolescence, or the history of the British professional upper middle-class.—Ross McKibbin, Twentieth Century British History

“charming and insightful testimony …. Anthony’s diary offers glimpses of wartime public school life that escape official school histories…. Also recorded are moving encounters with death on the home front.

This is an absorbing and revealing story of an emergent moral consciousness, taking a critical stand on subjects like school authority, state propaganda and international relations in war. … a moving and often wryly amusing commentary on growing up in his society and time….—Peter Cunningham, History of Education

Book Summary

The diary which he kept through most of the Second World War is a rare insight into the life of a schoolboy approaching maturity in the early 1940s. It records the current of school tasks and escapades, cadet force exercises and holiday adventures, and his fascinated exploration of the natural world which surrounded him. Amongst these everyday things, his chronicle conveys the growth of a reflective personality and the emergence of a radical political outlook, prompted by the global upheaval and by a family tradition of social concern, anti- fascism and commitment to state sponsored health provision for all.

We follow his questioning of school and the society beyond, his changing attitude to the war, and his share in the fears, hopes and struggles from which emerged such pillars of the modern world as the United Nations and the National Health Service – along with the conflicts of belief which have been inseparable from them ever since. Although he was intensely involved in all these issues, his diary conveys too his frustration at being, as he felt, on the edge of life and the war – both because of his youth, and the unreality of a boarding school existence.

The author has added a number of recent comments and reflections to clarify the original narrative, and sketch retrospectively the long- term significance of what he and all with him went through in those years.

Contents

Introduction

The origins of the diary
Family background
My childhood
Political influences
The world in the 1930s
The world at the start of 1940

Chapter 2: 1940

World events: 1940
Diary for 1940

Chapter 3: 1941

World events: 1941
Diary for 1941

Chapter 4: 1942

World events: 1942
Diary for 1942

Chapter 5: 1943—1944

World events: January 1943—February 1944
Diary for 1943
Diary for 1944

Chapter 6: Retrospect