Please help identify this WW2 film

[MarianneOnAMotorcycle]

I saw it around 20 years ago on TV. I think it was fairly new at the time. thought the star was Niamh Cusak but I can't find it on any of her filmographies. Anyway the star was someone like her — very softly-spoken and sort of "meek".

It's set in England and starts with her husband (and father of their 2 children) going off to war (I think it was WW2). While he's away she becomes very independent, even down to fixing the car's engine when it breaks down on the road!

Of course there is trouble when her husband comes back and doesn't like the changes... she ends up ditching him.

The only thing I remember specifically is her and the children singing a song in the car with the lyrics "there's sand in the gas"... and this recurred a few times in the film.

Please tell me if you know what this might be… It's been driving me mad for months!

It's a tv adaptation of Back Home by Michelle Magorian

Yep that is definitely Back Home. There was a second version made several years later too with Sarah Lancaster I think.

It was Hayley Mills in the first version.
(One of my all time favourite books is Back Home)

Ah, I had high hopes but I've determined that's not the right one, unfortunately, after reading the synopsis. The one I'm thinking of is definitely focused on the wife of the family, and the children are not evacuated at any point. Sarah Lancashire is definitely the right 'type' of character though.

I'm convinced it is this. In the book all the evacuating is in the past and the key line about 'sand in the gas' is there.

michellemagorian.com/back-home/tv-drama/

Yes it really does sound like Back Home. It's set just after the war so the daughter has come home after being evacuated (to America so has an American accent), the son was born during the war so stayed with the mum.

It's actually 'dirt in the line'

OK I stand corrected… I think that is the right one!! I just watched the ending of @DownToTheSeaAgain's link as I remembered the film closing with them singing that song!
(And the husband looking a bit like Hitler.)

Thank you all and apologies for ever doubting you! x x x x x

@MarianneOnAMotorcycle the original book (and first film adaptation) is very much about the daughter and is from her point of view. The Sarah Lancashire version was more about the mum.
I remember not liking it as much because (no offence to her) I always feel any thing with Sarah Lancashire in is very much "Sarah Lancashire as Sarah Lancashire" 😂

Back Home is one of my favourite books ever! I first read it when I was about 6 and I picked up a copy for 50p from a school fete. It is one of those books that moved me in such a way I’ve never forgotten (probably my first time thinking or hearing about the impact of the war). I always wanted to be like Rusty, now as an adult I want to be like Peggy :D

I never knew there was a film made, it’s nice to know others love the story too. I’ve never met anyone in real life who’s even heard of it.

I loved it too.

Did you read A Little Love Song by her. I think that's fab and very underrated.

I thought about the book Back Home this week, when I had two people in a group with the same name, and from somewhere the line leapt into my head, something like, "when I joined the WVS, there were already three Margarets: Margaret, Maggie and Meg. So I became Peggy". I last read this more than 30 years ago! It's funny how insignificant lines from books can just stick with you.

I haven't seen the adaptations, but that's exactly the kind of thing I want to watch on a day like today - one to save for a "I'm not leaving the house" Sunday in the next few months.

Back Home is one of my childhood favourites too. Goodnight Mr Tom is far better known but Back Home is just as good in my opinion and deserves to be better known than it is.

@DownToTheSeaAgain apparently when a Little Love Song was published in America it was re-written with changes including an extra sister and given a different name ("Swan Song" I think).
I would love to get a copy buy it seems to be out of print in the USA and secondhand copies are either ridiculously expensive or just don't exist.

This is fascinating. Thank you. Can't see why it needed rewriting as I feel it is a beautiful story as it is. Wish I could find my old copy too.

Yes I read A Little Love Song when I was a little older, perhaps 12ish, and although I enjoyed it, it didn’t become one of those ‘change your life,’ type reads which Back Home was for me. I do also love Goodnight Mr Tom.

Michelle Magorian is just fantastic at writing for children without ever patronising them. I do have a soft spot for her as she is from the same county as me, but I do feel Back Home is such an underrated gem and also so important to show the roles women played during the war, and the impact on them when it ended. It’s hard to believe the fifties came after all that independence.

I think I appreciated Little Love Song more when I re read it as an adult. I also enjoyed 'Just Henry' about a teenage boy and his cinema obsession. There was a TV film of that too but I think they changed quite a bit.

Yes. Just Henry was set in that incredibly cold post war winter. Hard to imagine that and all the rationing/ austerity.

I love Michelle Magorian. This thread has prompted me to re read as it has been more than 30 years.

Would Going Home be a good book for a 14 year old girl to read?

Back Home? I think it depends on the 14 year old and their interests. The main character in Back Home is 12, and there’s no romance or anything, so some 14 year olds might find it a bit young for them. Others will quite happily read it. I would say if you know that your 14 year old is happy to read books set in the past then they will probably like this.

I loved Back Home (and Goodnight Mr Tom) at 14. They were probably my first ventures into a "good long stand alone novel".
It's hard to find a good YA/children's book these days that's not part of a series.