The Bedford Diary of Leah Aynsley 1943-1946 Edited by Patricia and Robert Malcolmson

The Bedford Diary of

Leah Aynsley 1943-1946 Edited by Patricia and  Robert Malcolmson is a tribute to all the people of the working class and middle-class and the difficult years they spent during the last World War. Leah Aynsley, unmarried, vivacious, interested in various activities, kept diaries for many decades. This one has been chosen by the editors of this book because written during the Second World War.

It is important because thanks to the word of Leah, this book let us show the society of the time and how a person lived, loved, interacted with people, and much more.

Leah was an interesting lady. When I watched her pictures I noticed an open smile, and two brilliant eyes. Leah stayed in the house where her parents moved, in Bedford, till close to her end.

She interrupted to write journals for several years, re-starting to write a journal when the war began. She added she was writing this diary because later she would have presented it to one of her relatives, for giving an idea of the years of war. 

Difficult ones, milk and other food rationed, there were often bombs heard by the entire population and of course no one could not stay too tranquil. 

Leah coped during these years with rheumatisms and this one will be one of the main, private thematic that afflicted the most our protagonist. 

She loved to take good care of her teeth and frequently Leah visited the dentist of the town; she enjoyed to go to several concerts of classical music. She was an avid reader, she enjoyed reading biographies and yankee books, as she classified certain readings; at the same time being an active, and great passionate gardener, she enjoyed reading books about gardening. She also loved to reading newsmagazines; she was a subscriber and one day, not receiving her copy, she called for an explanations:  enemies bombarded the road and it was not possible to distribute newsmagazines.

I found a page extraordinary poetic. Leah told she loved to go in a place close to her house for admiring a certain kind of flowers, plants. Then once the war started they bombarded that place and poetry, calm, the relaxation donated by nature at Leah, was over. That relaxing corner of the world for a certain time destroyed.

Leah loved to writing and receiving wagons of letters from Lilly, the wife of her brother, her brother and many other people as well. She regularly sent lot of parcels, ad she enjoyed to stay busy in many different ways.

There is, without too many doubts, the history not just of Leah but of a city, Bedford, in these pages.

There is Italy as well because some prisoners spent time in Bedford; then an italian one cut the head of an American soldier. He was later killed. People had good consideration of Italians. Just: this one became mad and killed a person. 

I personally enjoyed reading this diary. The writer maintained her thoughts on the surface preferring to report practical things and the facts of the day; nothing has been written for case. There was censorship; Leah wrote how, sometimes, when she received letters, these ones were opened for reading the content, so substantially most of the entries of the diary are articulated for not discontent anyone.

She was proud of what she was doing and writing.

Leah searched spasmodically to perpetuate herself thanks to her diaries; to be remembered; a witness of her time; her life, spent in the garden, but also reading, writing letters and diaries, meeting people, working, sipping good tea in the garden, or with friends, smiling, enjoying her existence, as one day wrote in an entry of a journal written in 1935. That day she complained; she did not see a sense in her existence but at the same time, she added, she was grateful and happy for what she had, and for her existence, for being, after all, too sad.

Oh, you must read this book. I know that you'll love it!

Highly recommended.

I thank Boydell Press for the physical copy of this book. 

Anna Maria Polidori