Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther

Having taken our young grandson on a trip to the Cabinet War Rooms in Westminster today I am in the mood to re-read something about the Second World War. This book is the obvious choice: a cosy comfortable read I turn to time and again.
Originally written for a column in The Times, then published as a book in October 1939, just after the outbreak of war, these essays reflect the author’s positive enthusiasm for life seen through the eyes of a Chelsea wife and mother determined to ‘keep calm and carry on’ in unsettled times.
I’ve always loved the first essay: Mrs. Miniver Comes Home best: turning the key in the familiar latch, arranging flowers in a vase, settling down to tea and library books in the drawing room.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed, very softly and precisely, five times. A tug hooted from the river. A sudden breeze brought the sharp tang of a bonfire in at the window.
And Mrs. Miniver, with a little sigh of contentment, rang for tea.
Weekends are spent at Starlings, their house in the country; Mrs. Miniver buys fireworks, goes Christmas shopping and treats herself to a green lizard engagement diary. They queue for gas masks at the Town Hall and life goes on. As indeed it must.
One is what one remembers: no more, no less.
Caroline Miniver comes into her own in four letters written to a friend , published in The Times in the autumn of 1939:
She observes people carrying gas masks with panache. You might think, walking around London, everybody was going off to a picnic with a box of special food.
Another noticeable thing is the way people are taking advantage of the wide sandbag ledges to sit comfortably in the sun and eat their lunch.
She describes the war-time concert at the National Gallery:
Everything she played seemed to have a double loveliness, as though she had managed to distil into it all the beauty of the pictures that were missing from the walls. It was quite unforgettable.
She recalls a quotation from a friend 'when it looked as if we were going to get no plays, films, pictures, music at all'. "We must live on stored beauty like a squirrel on nuts."
Mrs Miniver is an inspiration to us all.