This is a big book, at over five hundred pages long, including the source notes. But this should not put any potential reader off. Every page provides compelling insights into the reality of women's lives during and immediately after WWII. The voices of the fifty individual women interviewed and the honesty of their recollections, leap off the page and are tremendously involving. Additionally, Virginia Nicholson has filled out the background with some terrific research, that reads every bit as well as the best reportage of the period.The strength of the book lies in its depiction of the lives of a cross section of otherwise ordinary women, thrust into the Land Army, the factories and the military, or simply trying to keep family life going, often while their sons, husbands and lovers were off fighting or at sea. A mesmerising read, that I was sorry to finish.