Penny Starns: 6 books

The mass evacuation of children and new and expectant mothers during World War II is well documented. But more than 50 per cent of children were not evacuated during the war, and it is these young people who offer an unrivaled view of what life was like during the bombing raids in Britain’s...

Margot Turner's tale of survival is so unusual and dramatic that it inspired the 1980s television series Tenko. The cargo ship on which she was evacuated from Singapore in 1942 was shelled, leaving her on a makeshift raft with 16 other survivors. One by one they perished, leaving her alone, burnt...

Odette Brailly entered the nation's consciousness in the 1950s when her remarkable—and romantic—exploits as an SOE agent first came to light. She had been the first woman to be awarded the GC, as well as the Legion d'Honneur, and in 1950 the release of a film about her life made her the darling...

From May, 1940, many British parents chose to move their children safety abroad to Australia, South Africa, Canada, and New Zealand. Over 200,000 applications had been made by the time the scheme closed just four months later, and these "Seavacs," as they became known, had a variety of...

Following the outbreak WWI, the British Red Cross appealed for volunteers to train as frontline medical staff, and a major volunteer field hospital was built at Etaples in France. Women volunteered for a variety of reasons. Some believed that they were responding to a vocational or religious calling,...

As the German Luftwaffe subjected Britain's major cities and ports to unremitting waves of aerial bombardment, doctors, nurses, and first aiders constantly risked their lives to give urgent treatment to the severely wounded. Over 80,000 casualties were sustained during this period and city hospitals,...