Blitz Writing: Night Shift (1941) & It was Different at the Time (1943) – Inez Holden

With thanks to Handheld Press for the review copy

The two texts contained in Blitz Writing; Night Shift and It was Different at the Time, are back in print after many years thanks to Handheld Press. First published in 1941 and 1943 respectively, they provide an extraordinary portrait of the war years in Britain. Ordinary people, in factories and hospitals, in the streets and rooming houses of a Britain living through extraordinary times. The first text; Night Shift is a novella – running to 85 pages. The second, later text, a memoir beginning in 1938, was originally intended to be part of a joint project with George Orwell. Orwell in the end was unable to contribute, so instead we are left with Inez Holden’s intimate and accessible account of the period just before the war and the first two years of a conflict that had yet to end when the book was first published.

Inez Holden might not be a familiar name to us today – however in her day she was a well known writer of novels and short stories. According to Kristin Bluemel in her introduction to this edition, Holden was known as much for her flamboyant lifestyle and friendship with notable figures like Anthony Powell, HG Wells, Evelyn Waugh, and George Orwell, as she was for her literary output. However, she published seven novels, two story collections and a wartime diary.

Night Shift is a novella about factory workers. Holden’s largely working-class characters have been conscripted into Braille’s; a London factory, making camera parts for reconnaissance aeroplanes. An unnamed narrator introduces us to the night shift workers and the world they inhabit. Here is the noise of the factory machinery, a constant dull thump, distantly in the background the sound of air raids going on above them. A new girl has recently started at the factory, soon she is nicknamed Feather – Sid; one of the men in white coats is second in charge, he is frequently called upon to assist with problems with the machinery. Feather is soon an established member of the team; indulging in gossip and the inane chatter of workers brought together for long hours of tedious routine.

“At one minute to one most of the workers had gathered round the notice board to clock out for the night meal. They stood for a moment like a group waiting to be photographed. Just before the minute hand jerked up to the appointed hour they all reached out towards the rack holding their hour cards on which their names and numbers were written. One by one they dropped the cards into the clocking-in mouth, knocked in the knob, like a blow to the front teeth, and taking out the cards put them back into the rack.”

Conversations always run along similar lines, the hope of more money – whether ‘he’ is overhead that night – whether the second part of the night – after the hour long meal break, provided by Ma in the canteen has been eaten – goes faster or not. The voices are wonderful, realistic and full of humour and pathos. This is a world rarely portrayed in fiction – and I loved being part of it.

The second text is Holden’s memoir of the years 1938-1941 begins around the time of the Munich agreement – talk of war is everywhere, and Inez Holden always knew it would come.

“Personally I have never doubted during these last years that we should be at war very soon, but now that seems as if it will break out within a few days I find a certain reluctance to accept something which I already knew must happen. I find the same attitude in several of my friends. They would be appalled at the possibility of a second sell-out – as at the time of Munich – but there is just this difficulty of making the mental jump from even phoney-peace to the start of slaughter near us.”

In this memoir Holden gives us her own personal perspective of the war and the days leading up to it. The entries depict Holden’s wartime service in hospitals and at a government training centre, as a BBC broadcaster, a fire watcher and guest at a BBC centre called ‘Hogsnorton’. 

Holden recounts stories of patients she came across in the hospital – like the man, who was quite the celebrity on the ward for the number of times he had ‘gone down’ (to the operating theatre). Additionally, Holden shows us the normality of life going on away from the busy hospital wards, the streets full of people despite the threat of raids, cinemas showing slapstick comedy, while elsewhere the stretcher bearers and rescue workers carry out their work, courageously enduring long hours, bombardment and danger as they assist the people of a city in wartime.

“There were air raids every night now. They start about seven o’clock. We know all the sounds very well. A very familiar sound is a particular kind of crackling after the fall of incendiary bombs. We go out then and put the fires out with stirrup pumps and sand.”

In these two texts Inez Holden shows the London under bombardment that she herself was living through at the time. There is some overlap in time with the two texts, together they examine a city and its people during the blitz, beautifully written, vivid and compelling.

Blitz Writing was another read for the Librarything ‘reading the 1940s’ project – though it fitted more into last month’s theme of work than this month’s food theme.