Wartime Reads from Young @ Heart Book Club

This month, one of our book-clubbers read The Wartime Book Club and The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson which took us on an interesting train of thought.

As a number of us are from Britain we wondered: what happened to the books and readers during WWII?  We had ideas, but no actual facts!  Here are a few things we discovered.

In December 1940, a raid on London destroyed warehouses dating back to Shakespeare’s day which became ‘a crematorium’ for 6 million books.  Many publishers went out of business as their stock burned. 

Those publishers who remained had to contend with other issues: 

• Inaccessibility of raw materials from France and North Africa to make paper. Paper quality became so bad that a book might last only 20 readings.
• Governmental paper rationing.  Paper was needed for making ration cards, training manuals, regulations, signs and many other items.  By 1941 publishers were using 35% of the amount of paper than before the war, and the government used twice as much paper as all other publishing.
• Worker shortages in paper production, printing and distribution as many young men were called up to serve. 

Blackouts made reading at night difficult as even a chink of light through a curtain was punishable with a fine. 

We discovered how reading habits and tastes changed for both children and adults, and how publishers responded to this as the war progressed. It is a fascinating topic, and made us reflect on current issues such as modern warfare and pandemic lockdowns before we came back to the books that started the conversation!

The Little Wartime Library is a fictional take on the real story of Bethnal Green’s Underground Library.  The library was 15 feet square and housed 4000 titles that survived the bombing of the main library, and was home and safety to hundreds of people escaping the bombs overhead.  Bethnal Green also had a café, piano, theatre, doctor, daycare and hairdresser – it was the social hub of the area and much loved by the people who used it.  But why is the library so fondly remembered?

“A library is the only place you can go—from cradle to grave—that is free, safe, democratic and no one will try to flog you anything. You don’t have to part with a penny to travel the world. It’s the heartbeat of a community, offering precious resources to people in need. It’s a place just to be, to dream and to escape—with books. And what’s more precious than that? So, here’s to all library workers. We need you.” - From The Author’s Note, The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson

The following websites offer a wealth of information on what happened to books and reading during the Blitz:

The British Academy: Books in wartime: innocent victims or guilty parties? by Professor Andrew Pettegree FBA
Deane Photographic Archives on the London Blitz
The London Library - The Day the Bomb Dropped
Historia: Magazine of the Historical Writers' Association - Bethnal Green's Underground Wartime Library

Posted by Elizabeth

 

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