The weather is so beautiful it’s almost an accusation. The phrase ‘Queen’s Weather ‘ kept coming into my head while I was out walking – the phrase for the beautiful weather that was said to mark Queen Victoria’s appearances in public. I’ve kept it in my head since I first heard Alan Bennett’s play ‘Forty Years On’ which I greatly admire.

I’ve been thinking in the last few days about Vera Brittain’s ‘Testament of Youth.’ I read it first when I was much younger not far from Vera’s age during the First World War and I’ve read it again quite recently. It’s quality is extraordinary but when I read it for the second time I was almost overwhelmed by how terrible it must have been to live in a constant state of anticipation of bad news arriving. The sense of certainty that it must come, may have happened but has yet to arrive. It makes the courage that underpins the book so remarkable.

Yesterday I listened to a reading of Antonia Barber’s wonderful children’s story ‘The Mousehole Cat’ on the radio. It was hugely reassuring.

I’ve been reading recently (just a few pages left) ‘To War with Whitaker’ – a memoir of the Second World War by Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly. It’s just been reissued in a handsome, very nice sized edition by Slightly Foxed. It’s a glorious colour – I know that’s the least important thing about a book – I’m going to say exactly the colour of building sand. That’s a great compliment in my book, a beautiful dull gold. The author spent the majority of her war in the theatre of the Middle East as close as possible to her husband and working closely with many of the great players in the region.

Perhaps a generalised uncertainty means I found myself so greatly moved by Hermione’s account of hearing of the death of her Great-Aunt Ethel in 1945. Hermione writes of her Aunt that she had a beard, moustache and a voice like a corncrake but how much she was loved because everything interested her and she was never shocked. I would take that as my epitaph.

Hermione’s husband was captured and imprisoned in Italy and by an unplanned coincidence ‘To War with Whitaker’ was the third book I’d read recently which narrated parts of the story of POWs in Italy. The other two were Eric Newby’s ‘Love and War in the Apennines (Slightly Foxed again) and Michael Gilbert’s crime novel ‘Death in Captivity’ (British Library Crime Classics). Oddly, two of them – ‘Death in Captivity’ and ‘To War with Whitaker’ both mention productions of ‘The Barretts of Wimpole Street.’ In the case of ‘Death in Captivity’ a production of great importance to the plot.

All three are salutary reminders of the uncertainty which must have pervaded the thinking of people building their lives either side and throughout the Second World War.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton