An episode from 12/21/23: What is it like for your country to declare war, and then wait for it, and then live through it? Tonight, I read only a small sampling from Norman Longmate's How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War.

The book focuses on the home front in Britain and the experiences, mostly, of everyday civilians, the elderly, women, and children: How do you live through the Blitz? How do parents say goodbye to their children, millions of whom were relocated from urbans areas to the countryside, to protect them from attack? How do you eat when food is rationed, what kind of social life is possible, and was the BBC allowed to be funny (spoiler alert: yes)?

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