Mary Churchill’s War: The Wartime Diaries of Churchill’s Youngest Daughter edited by Emma Soames

 Biography is one of my favourite genres. Diaries are a wonderful form of autobiography, especially if the diarist is, in equal measure, honest, straightforward and immensely entertaining. And, of course, if she is the youngest child of Winston Churchill and recording life as it is happening through World War 2.

Mary, born into high privilege and living a happy and extremely comfortable life, was 16 at the beginning of the War. At 18 she joined the ATS as a private assigned to anti-aircraft batteries and made her way through the ranks to captain. Her love for her parents (and her adoration of her father) and her bright, sweet personality shine through the pages of her diaries. At times she becomes introspective, like all teenage girls through the ages, and at such times she writes things like “...how I hate, despise and loathe myself and alternatively how absolutely the cat’s pants I think I am and how obsessed I am with myself. O bloody girl”. So there she was, a girl from an extraordinary  background expressing very ordinary thoughts! Her time in the army was far from ordinary, though. She could be scrubbing out the barracks or manning a battery one day and then accompanying her father at a dinner with other world leaders the next!

Mary loved clothes and there are lots of descriptions of new outfits and nights out in glamorous locations with fascinating people.  I can’t imagine many of the girls she was serving with would have had access to the luxuries that were normal for her but I think it would have been hard not to care for and respect her as a fellow soldier. She writes of her relationships with her sisters, Sarah and Diana, and her brother, Randolph and of her home life with her parents, Mummie and Papa, all of which is intensely interesting.

I loved this excellent book. The diaries are introduced and edited by Emma Soames, one of Mary’s five children, who makes the observation, “...it is not long before the reader of these diaries is eavesdropping on history”.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Published by John Murray, an Hachette UK Company