Ice Cream, Gasmasks, and God : A Memoir of World War II and Postwar Britain
A Presentation by Joyce Lovely reviewing her life during World War II in Liverpool, England and the postwar years.
Over seventy years have passed since the ending of World War II. In her book, “Ice Cream, Gasmasks and God” Joyce Lovely recounts growing up in Liverpool, England amid air raids, bombs and gasmasks. As a child, she tells of life during the war from her perspective, allowing the grown ups to worry about battles, rations and lack of necessities.
Postwar Britain continued to be difficult with rationing extending until 1953, the year Queen Elizabeth was crowned. She brings the reader into the life of a teenager in the fifties, where girls had strict mores to follow, but still had fun, that included her two working years in London. The book concludes with her marriage to a minister and their first three years of living in the far flung Shetland Islands. Here she shares how she rebelled against the island expectations of ‘yon minister’s wife’ as well as the unusual accounts of village life, often with hilarious results.
Joyce will present her book, sharing some of the highlights, as well as a few other stories of war time England, not perhaps included in her book. Questions, of course, will be welcomed.
This is what people are saying about the book:
Fascinating, funny and gloriously nostalgic, Ice Cream, Gas Masks and God is the author’s trip down memory lane to 1940s Liverpool, where early reminiscences include not just the hated gas mask, but also the regular night time spells in the air raid shelter as the bombs fell.
Discover what it was like to live a child’s life with air-raids, bombs falling, and the hated gasmasks! Then follow her teenage years and young adulthood in Liverpool and London. The book culminates in her marriage to a parson and three years on the remote Shetland Islands where she experiences challenges, humour and the many kindnesses offered by the villagers.