Jocelyn Playfair

Originally published in 1944, the Daily Mail described this as 'an elegiac romance that describes social niceties, petty squabbles, self-restraint, all played out in a rural idyll, while abroad thousands die defending that very way of life.' Set at the time of the fall of Tobruk in 1942, one of the low points of the war, this is a genuine portrayal of how things were on the home front.