What makes a 1930s society girl become a farmer?
Answer: the Second World War.
This is the story of my mother, Frances Donaldson, a privileged young woman giving her all in wartime.
With her soldier husband, Jack, far away and 2 young children to care for, she bought a farm near Stratford-Upon-Avon and determined to live off it. Could an emotionally fragile young mother survive the ordeal?
During 6 long years of war, she learned to farm, battling with the antagonism of the men she was trying to manage, vulnerable to the demands of the Ministry of Agriculture while coping with small children and no money. War was a test of relationships, character and endurance.
A Woman’s War tells how she conquered WWII. An emotional tale from riches to rags, from joy to sorrow, and, at the end of the war together again with Jack, rejoicing. They continue farming together in the small Warwickshire village of Wilmcote.The story is illustrated with letters and contemporary photographs. Read it and share her trials today.
Robert Boyd wrote:
"Female farming in "The War". A laughing, crying, gripping, writer-to-be's letters to her husband through five long years of separation. She, a famous playwright's daughter from high society turned farmer, responds with candour and can-do to male dominance in the cowshed and the realities of the woman's land army volunteers. A moving must-read of feminism two generations before its time coupled with the real smell of Britain before and after Dunkirk. The fear and the relief." Robert Boyd
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