Citizen Armies — Beryl Kingston

The Jackson family's peaceful south London life is shattered when World War Two breaks out. Sixteen-year-old Mary is immediately evacuated, and the rest of the family sets about combining daily life with wartime duties in the nation's capital. The war is gruelling and heart-breaking for Londoners, and Rosie and Jim Jackson are no exception. But their close family bonds and the warmth of friends and neighbours see them through, as the ups and downs of family life - marriages, births and deaths - continue as they always have, despite the conflict that rampages around them. Until one day, a tragedy that nobody had dared to consider, strikes a devastating blow. And as the war gradually comes to a close, the Jacksons find themselves facing the future with a family - and a country - that have been irrevocably changed. Citizen Armies combines the qualities of an absorbing family saga with acutely observed and beautifully written social history, and is bound to please lovers of fiction and history alike.