Spam Tomorrow
Published on 5. August 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-1-913054-21-2 (ISBN)
Description
When I asked the local chemist for lint and disinfectant, he felt it was only fair to allow the first-aid post to claim me. . . . Half a dozen V.A.D.s made a rush at me and treated my small abrasion as though my whole head had been blown off.
From an impromptu wedding in the early days of World War II, to a bout with German measles in a hospital reminiscent of a medieval torture chamber, to becoming the first casualty for over-eager V.A.D.s, Verily Anderson’s war gets off to a bumpy start. And it doesn’t get easier.
In this acclaimed memoir, we follow the inimitable Verily and her husband Donald through all the vicissitudes of war, including the unforgettable birth of Verily’s first child in the midst of a German bombing raid. By turns hilarious, poignant, and harrowing (and sometimes all three at once), Spam Tomorrow presents a rollicking view of home front life from the perspective of one strong, courageous, and very funny participant.
‘A new kind of wartime experience – new, that is, to literature; the job of marrying and having babies. . . . Those who agree with it will become incurable addicts.’ Elizabeth Bowen
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Salisbury
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
291 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-913054-21-2 (9781913054212)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Verily Anderson was born Verily Bruce in 1915. Though she published more than 30 books - memoirs, biographies, children's stories and work ranging from personal reminiscences to Shakespeare scholarship - her breakthrough as a writer came in 1956 when she published Spam Tomorrow, the classic account of her wartime experiences on the home front. Elizabeth Bowen hailed it as a new kind of memoir, one of the first to explore the lives of women in wartime.
During the war she met Donald Anderson. They married in 1940 and had five children. Donald died in 1956, and for the remainder of her life Verily worked primarily as a writer. When Verily married architect Paul Paget in 1971, Joyce Grenfell was matron of honour, and John Betjeman best man.
Her last book - a memoir of the time she spent at Herstmonceux Castle, Sussex, in the 1930s and 40s - was completed the day before she died.
Verily Anderson died in 2010, at the age of ninety-five. She was survived by four children, sixteen grandchildren, fourteen great-grandchildren - and Alfie, her beloved RNIB guide-dog.