The Tallahassee Democrat Review September 2001
'Still vibrant and helpful today...a poignant, honest, frightening, yet heartwarming record of one articulate woman's coping with war.'
Book Description
Vere Hodgson worked for a Notting Hill Gate charity during
the Second World War ; being sparky and unflappable, she was not going to
let Hitler make a difference to her life, but the beginning of the Blitz
did, which is why she began her published diaries on 25 June 1940: 'Last
night at about 1 a.m. we had the first air raid of the war on London. My
room is just opposite the police station, so I got the full benefit of the
sirens. It made me leap out of bed...'
the Second World War ; being sparky and unflappable, she was not going to
let Hitler make a difference to her life, but the beginning of the Blitz
did, which is why she began her published diaries on 25 June 1940: 'Last
night at about 1 a.m. we had the first air raid of the war on London. My
room is just opposite the police station, so I got the full benefit of the
sirens. It made me leap out of bed...'
The war continued for five more years, but Vere's comments on her work,
friends, what was happening to London and the news ('We hold our breath
over Crete', 'There is to be a new system of Warning') combine to make Few
Eggs and No Oranges unusually readable. It is a long - 600 page - book but
a deeply engrossing one. The TLS remarked: 'The diaries capture the sense
of living through great events and not being overwhelmed by them... they
display an extraordinary - though widespread - capacity for not giving
way in the face of horrors and difficulties.' 'A classic book that still
rings vibrant and helpful today... a heartwarming record of one articulate
woman's coping with the war,' wrote the Tallahassee Democratic Review.
About the Author
Winifred VERE HODGSON was born in 1901 in Edgbaston, Birmingham,
where her widowed mother ran the family home as a boarding house. Vere,
named after an uncle who was the marine biologist on Captain Scott's ship,
read History at Birmingham University, taught first at the Poggio
Imperiale, the former Summer Palace of the grand dukes of Tuscany which
had been turned into a 'rather select girls' school' (Mussolini's daughter
was a pupil), and later on at a school in Folkestone. From the early
1930s she helped to run a local charity in Notting Hill Gate. Vere kept a
diary from girlhood onwards and in 1976 edited her 1940-45 diaries for
publication as Few Eggs and No Oranges. After her retirement she went to
live in the village of Church Stretton in Shropshire, where she died in
1979.
where her widowed mother ran the family home as a boarding house. Vere,
named after an uncle who was the marine biologist on Captain Scott's ship,
read History at Birmingham University, taught first at the Poggio
Imperiale, the former Summer Palace of the grand dukes of Tuscany which
had been turned into a 'rather select girls' school' (Mussolini's daughter
was a pupil), and later on at a school in Folkestone. From the early
1930s she helped to run a local charity in Notting Hill Gate. Vere kept a
diary from girlhood onwards and in 1976 edited her 1940-45 diaries for
publication as Few Eggs and No Oranges. After her retirement she went to
live in the village of Church Stretton in Shropshire, where she died in
1979.
