The second volume of these war diaries goes back to the beginning of the Second World War. I didn’t find the them as compelling as the ones from after the war. There’s a different set of diarists—only one of the original five is featured here—and they didn’t seem to be such interesting characters.

The thing that really surprised me was how little certainty there was that we would win the war; they were genuinely waiting for Hitler to invade Britain. This probably shouldn’t surprise me but it did and I guess it comes from the difference between reading contemporary observations and reading fiction set in the war years written with the hindsight that we would win. And also the fact that these personal diaries aren’t trying to put on a brave front or show “the spirit of the Blitz” or anything like that.

Even though I didn’t think this book was as unputdownable as it’s predecessor it was still mightily interesting and I’ll be on the lookout for the third volume which takes in the later years of the war.