Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Jambusters: The remarkable story which has inspired the ITV drama Home Fires
    Unavailable
    Jambusters: The remarkable story which has inspired the ITV drama Home Fires
    Unavailable
    Jambusters: The remarkable story which has inspired the ITV drama Home Fires
    Ebook445 pages6 hours

    Jambusters: The remarkable story which has inspired the ITV drama Home Fires

    By Julie Summers

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    The compelling true story that inspired the hugely successful major ITV drama series HOME FIRES – now in its second season. 

    The Second World War was the WI's finest hour. The whole of its previous history - two decades of educating, entertaining and supporting women and campaigning on women's issues - culminated in the enormous collective responsibility felt by the members to 'do their bit' for Britain. With all the vigour, energy and enthusiasm at their disposal, a third of a million country women set out to make their lives and the lives of those around them more bearable in what they described as 'a period of insanity'.

    Through archive material and interviews with many WI members, Julie Summers takes us behind the scenes, revealing their nitty-gritty approach to the daily problems presented by the conflict. Jambusters is the fascinating story of how the Women's Institute pulled rural Britain through the war with pots of jam and a spirit of make-do-and-mend.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster UK
    Release dateFeb 28, 2013
    ISBN9780857200471
    Unavailable
    Jambusters: The remarkable story which has inspired the ITV drama Home Fires
    Author

    Julie Summers

    Julie Summers is the author of Jambusters: the story of the Women's Institute in the Second World War, which inspired ITV's 2015 hugely successful drama Home Fires, now into a second series. She also wrote When the Children Came Home and Stranger in the House, among others. Fashion on the Ration appeared in March 2015. She lives in Oxford.

    Related to Jambusters

    Related ebooks

    History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Perfect Plan

      Mar 24, 2021

      Monday: Fat Burn + 30-min brisk walk or cycle Tuesday: Legs workout + 30-min brisk walk or cycle Wednesday: Rest day Thursday: Chest and Back workout + 30-min brisk walk or cycle Friday: Bums and Tums + 30-min brisk walk or cycle Saturday: Arms

      1 min read

    • Article

      The 25 best Australian books of 2022: Chloe Hooper, Alex Miller, Jessica Au and more

      Dec 19, 2022

      Simon & Schuster Chloe Hooper’s talent for piercing the beating heart of a story is turned inwards in this beautifully rendered and very personal book about how to talk about death with her young children, after discovering their father had an aggres

      9 min read

    • Article

      A Wimple Plan

      Dec 11, 2020

      A Wimple Plan
      3 min read

    • Article

      Finding Facts In Fiction

      Mar 12, 2021

      Finding Facts In Fiction
      10 min read

    • Article

      Readersʼ Letters

      Jul 27, 2022

      Readersʼ Letters
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Jun 1, 2022

      The Old Un’s Notes
      5 min read

    • Article

      Thirty Years Of Laughs

      Feb 9, 2022

      Thirty Years Of Laughs
      5 min read

    • Article

      Books & gifts

      Dec 10, 2021

      Books & gifts
      8 min read

    • Article

      Winter Reads!

      Dec 11, 2020

      Winter Reads!
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tales From The Echoing Green

      Jul 19, 2023

      Tales From The Echoing Green
      4 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Aug 25, 2021

      Readers’ Letters
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Supreme Act Of Trust

      Aug 10, 2022

      The Supreme Act Of Trust
      5 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Sep 21, 2022

      Readers’ Letters
      6 min read

    • Article

      To My Beloved PEOPLE

      Sep 15, 2022

      THE queen’s annual 3pm Christmas broadcast became as much of a tradition as turkey and tinsel, mince pies and mistletoe. The tradition was started by her grandfather King George V as a radio message in 1932 and was first televised in 1957 – but it to

      7 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Dec 15, 2021

      SIR: David Horspool writes (December issue) of Presidents’ Day in the USA. As Adlai Stevenson once said, ‘In America, anybody can be president. That’s one of the risks you take.’ Yours, Bob Frost, Deal, Kent SIR: Sister Teresa’s recalling (December i

      5 min read

    • Article

      Readers' Letters

      Feb 8, 2023

      Readers' Letters
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Voice, A Force, And A Friend

      Aug 9, 2023

      In 1947 The Australian Women’s Weekly correspondent Anne Matheson was crossing the grassy plains of South Africa on the King’s train; her tape recorder clutched in her white-gloved hand. Despite the oppressive heat, she and her press corps peers main

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Voice, A Force, And A Friend

      Aug 9, 2023

      In 1947 The Australian Women’s Weekly correspondent Anne Matheson was crossing the grassy plains of South Africa on the King’s train; her tape recorder clutched in her white-gloved hand. Despite the oppressive heat, she and her press corps peers main

      7 min read

    • Article

      Books & co

      Nov 11, 2022

      by Rachael English This novel, inspired by true events, tells the story of a mother’s sacrifice to save her child from starvation in the Irish Famine. Young mother Bridget Moloney had faced the heartwrenching experience of leaving her baby daughter

      5 min read

    • Article

      A New Golden Age

      Oct 5, 2022

      A New Golden Age
      8 min read

    • Article

      Your Letters

      Oct 9, 2020

      Your Letters
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Jul 27, 2022

      The Old Un’s Notes
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Apr 16, 2020

      If the interview with Simon Jenkins in your March issue (A Welsh Tragedy?) is anything to go by, I suspect his recent Radio 4 documentary – controversially entitled Wales: A Twentieth-Century Tragedy? – was largely based on flimsy anecdotal evidence.

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Jambusters

    4/5

    19 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Informative, if a little pedestrian, overview of the tasks the women in the Institute undertook during the war years to keep the country clothed, fed & enthused. And more fascinating - their surveys, revealing the lack of running water, connected loos & other deprivations of huge swathes of country-folk.Brought home the sacrifices & awkwardnesses of many in the countryside who had to share their homes with urban mothers & children with very different life experiences & attitudes.
    • 4/5
      The story of the Women's Institute in Great Britain during WWII. I found the first chapter a bit tedious but thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the book. Astonishing and moving to read of all the WI accomplished during the war. Much admiration for these country women!
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book, the TV series Home Fires is apparently based on it, although it is an entirely fact based book. The characters in the series do not appear at all in any recognizable form.The book takes you through the history of the WI (Woman's institute) with the main content focusing on WWII.The WI was very heavily called upon to do their bit for King and country, helping with the war effort in some very surprising ways! The women went above and beyond the call of duty many many times taking on tasks that would have exhausted them many times over.A great comradeship between vastly differing woman of all walks of society sprang up and still continues to this day. The women were awe inspiring and I am not sure the likes will be seen again.
    • 5/5
      While I enjoyed reading all of Summers' books, Jambusters: The Story of the Women's Institute in the Second World War was my favorite of the lot. This volume was specifically about the role that the Women's Institute (WI) performed on both the national and county levels. These women played hosts to evacuees, took over the role of primary household manager, assumed the responsibility for the nation's food production, and so much more. Not only was the WI important during the war for the nation but even more so for women who made up its membership. The main goal of the WI was to provide a space for women to socialize (there's real value in this) and educate themselves on everything from how to preserve food and stretch out their meager rations to animal husbandry. (Many local chapters kept farm animals which they then sold to raise funds for war work.) I knew that they were a social group but I had no idea just how large of a role that they played. This just reinforced how amazing women truly are. 10/10
    • 4/5
      A very good and inspiriting look at what The Women's Institutes were able to achieve to keep Great Britain going during WWII. What these women were able to do every single day for years both during and after the war is purely mind-boggling to someone from a later, much more leisurely, era. I'd never heard of The Women's Institute before reading this book, but everything they stand for and strive to achieve makes them very much a community I'd like to be a part of if I lived in a rural part of the UK (in order to have a local institute, a town/village had to be beneath a certain population ceiling), but the amount of hard work they put in (or did during the war) is admittedly, daunting. The book was generally well-written, although telling this story requires a lot of names and a lot places and it was a constant challenge trying to keep it all straight as names were introduced and then reappeared in later chapters. There were also enough copy-editing errors to be noticed, which is somehow especially disappointing in non-fiction; I shouldn't hold it to a higher standard, but I do. Jambusters has whet my appetite for more narrative history of the home front during WWII and I'll be on the lookout for interesting ones.