London War Notes 1939-1945
by: Mollie Panter Downes

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1971, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 378 pages. From dust jacket notes: "For most Americans, the Second World War started on December 7, 1941, and much of the fighting took place in strange, faraway places. For the British, the war started on September 3, 1939, and much of the action took place in the skies over England. In the spring of 1940, after months of uneasy calm, Germany invaded the Lowlands and conquered France within a few days, leaving England without her only meaningful ally on the Continent. A year would pass before the Soviet Union was drawn into the war, and eighteen months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The United Kingdom, with a land area about the size of Wyoming, was alone, all alone, with only the Straits of Dover separating the island from Hitler's war machine. For six years Mollie Panter-Downes covered the war for The New Yorker magazine from her native England. Even at the height of the air war over London, when 'all that is best in the good life of civilized effort appears to be slowly and painfully keeling over,' she continued to file her fortnightly reports in an understated but dramatic fashion that reflected the fortitude of her fellow countrymen: 'The announcements of the first air-raid deaths are beginning to appear in the obituary columns of the morning papers. No mention is made of the cause of death, but the conventional phrase "very suddenly" is always used.' William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, has assembled Miss Panter-Downes' 'Letter from London' columns into a consecutive, on-the-spot chronicle of the war in England."