The basis for the PBS Masterpiece series starring Samantha Bond (Downton Abbey) and Francesca Annis (Cranford) Away from the frontlines of World War II, in towns and villages across Great Britain, ordinary women were playing a vital role in their country’s war effort. As members of the Women’s Institute, an organization with a presence in a third of Britain’s villages, they ran canteens and knitted garments for troops, collected tons of rosehips and other herbs to replace medicines that couldn’t be imported, and advised the government on issues ranging from evacuee housing to children’s health to postwar reconstruction. But they are best known for making jam: from produce they grew on every available scrap of land, they produced twelve million pounds of jam and preserves to feed a hungry nation. Home Fires, Julie Summers’s fascinating social history of the Women’s Institute during the war (when its members included the future Queen Elizabeth II along with her mother and grandmother), provides the remarkable and inspiring true story behind the upcoming PBS Masterpiece series that will be sure to delight fans of Call the Midwife and Foyle’s War. Through archival material and interviews with current and former Women’s Institute members, Home Fires gives us an intimate look at life on the home front during World War II.

Home Fires: The Story of the Women's Institute in the Second World War

History

Summers, Julie

Europe

Penguin??Books

Fearless on Everest

Biographies & Memoirs

Weidenfeld and Nicolson

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Away from the frontlines of World War II, in towns and villages across Great Britain, ordinary women were playing a vital role in their country's war effort. As members of the Women's Institute, an organization with a presence in a third of Britain's villages, they ran canteens and knitted garments for troops, collected tons of rosehips and other herbs to replace medicines that couldn't be imported, and advised the government on issues ranging from evacuee housing to children's health to postwar reconstruction. But they are best known for making jam: from produce they grew on every available scrap of land, they produced twelve million pounds of jamand preserves to feed a hungry nation.

Home Fires: The Story Of The Women's Institute In The Second World War: The Story of the Women's Institute in the Second World War

Turtleback Books

A moving and revealing insight into the real experiences of women welcoming home their menfolk from the Second World War - often after years of separation, during which their men, and the women themselves, had changed irrevocably.

Stranger in the House: Women's Stories of Men Returning from the Second World.

Simon&Schuster

In 1917 a remarkable organization came into being. Its brief was vastly ambitious: to commemorate the 1,100,00 men of the British Empire who lost their lives in the First World War. The Imperial War Graves Commission was the creation of one man, Sir Fabian Ware, whose energy and determination brought together some of the greatest designers and architects of the early twentieth century. This book looks at the history of war graves for British and Commonwealth servicemen and women, and examines how modern remembrance has been shaped by the work of Ware and his contemporaries after the First World War.

British and Commonwealth War Cemeteries (Shire Library)

Military

Shire Publications

Boat races and regattas are mainstays of the British summer — but where did these races originate and how have they become so important a part of our culture? Historian, writer and novice sculler Julie Summers here explains the history of British rowing as a competitive sport from the early nineteenth century to the present day. She then profiles the three most famous rowing events: the Boat Race, rowed on the incoming tide from Putney to Mortlake in spring; Henley Royal Regatta, which takes place on the first weekend of July; and the Olympic Games, which have yielded some of the greatest British Olympians of all time, including Sir Steve Redgrave, Sir Matthew Pinsent and Jack Beresford.

Rowing in Britain (Shire Library)

Sports & Outdoors

Miscellaneous

Shire

* Includes never-before-published letters and photographs * Written by an Irvine family member Mallory and Irvine. These two names have been inextricably joined since the two climbers disappeared on Mount Everest more than 75 years ago. Could they have been the first to reach the summit of the world's highest mountains-some 30 years earlier than Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay? Mallory's story has been well chronicled, but Irvine has always been overshadowed by his more famous climbing partner and little has been written about him. Who was he? Why was he invited by the British Everest Committee to join the 1924 expedition despite his limited mountaineering experience? And why did Mallory, 16 years his senior, select Irvine as his partner for the final assault on the summit? Julie Summers, great niece of Sandy Irvine, has been fascinated since childhood by the story of Uncle Sandy. In May 2000, Julie made an astonishing discovery: a long forgotten and unopened trunk containing Irvine's letters and photographs from Everest. Drawing on these and other material, Julie writes a revealing story of a fearless young adventurer whose life and death linked him with one of the greatest mountaineering legends of all time.

Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine

Biographies

MOUNTAINEERS BOOKS+

Stranger in the House

Pocket_Books

When the Children Came Home

Paragon (?}

The compelling true story of how the Women's Institute pulled Britain through the war with pots of jam and a spirit of make-do-and-mend.

Jambusters

Simon Schuster Ltd

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Books by Summers, Julie