I fancy reading something set in the 1940s- any recommendations?

[tethersend]

Please?

Or Barbara Pym, Excellent Women, Some Tame Gazelle, Less than Angels, etc. All fab.

I don't think anyone has yet mentioned: Love Lessons by Joan Wyndham, demonstrating that sex didn't start in 1963 (also Love is Blue which covers her "war service" in the Wrens.
As said before, Cazalet Chronicles are fabulous and cover 1938-45. Also Fortunes of War, Sword of Honour Suite Francaise. All very well written and very readable.

Three volumes (The Valley of Bones, The Soldier's Art, and The Military Philosophers) from Anthony Powell's 12-novel sequence "Dance to the Music of Time" are set in the 40s and are excellent.

One issue though is that by the time the War starts many of the characters have been developed over the previous 6 volumes, so you'd probably want to read the whole thing.

I think Peter Straub's Book-" The Hellfire Club" is set in the 40's.It is about the
History of some poets,some of which became famous and some which didn't.It
is a frightening,spooky and sometimes murderous Tale.We love it.Peter Straub
is a good friend of Stephen Kings, and the two friends co-wrote "The Talisman"
and "Black House".Altogether an exciting tale.Jill.

Manhattabn 45 by Jan Morris?

The White Pearl set in 1947 in Malaya, by Kate Furnivall.

This one The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst ?

Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means, is set in the mid 40s.

Westwood by Stella Gibbons (quite a slow-burner)
Another vote for the Cazalet books
The Echoing Grove by Rosamund Lehmann (but it will make you want to slit your wrists)
I'm trying to think of any jolly ones but can't really.

It's not necessarily jolly but Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd, available from Persephone, is very funny. Miss Ranskill was washed away on a desert island and has made it home after several years to England during WWII and everything is very strange and no one understands why she doesn't know about rationing and other rules.

The Cruel Sea by Nicolas Monsarrat. Out of print now but very very easy to pick up at a second hand book fair.

I am noting all these down in a big list; thank you for the recommendations.

I am really pleased to see RF Delderfield mentioned. I'm sure his books were dramatised when I was a child. He seems to be desperately out of fashion now, which is a shame. He can tell a story and writes proper fat fiction.

RF Delderfield: To Serve Them All My Days?

Most of To Serve Them All My Days is set a bit earlier, as the story starts just after WWI.

YY to Shute & Delderfield

Not spotted above - Daphne Du Maurier "Rule Britannia"

84 Charing Cross Road. Lovely.

YY to Diary of a Provincial Lady, London Belongs to Me and a Town Like Alice.

Feel a need to go and watch old episodes of Tenko now!

84 Charing Cross Road is lovely, and sad.

The Balkan and levant trilogy's by Olivia manning- fascinating semi auto biographical account of someone who lived in Romania, Greece and then Egypt in early years of the war.

Another vote for christabel bielenberg.

On the recommendation of this thread, I am reading Monica Dickens's 'Mariana'. Thoroughly enjoyable, she has a lovely turn of phrase as a writer.

I like Maureen lee books which are mostly set during the war in Liverpool. Also Helen Forrester's Twopence to cross the Mersey, Liverpool Miss, By the waters of Liverpool and Lime Street at 2 are her story of her early years growing up in Liverpool. They go from the 1930's and the depression till the end of World War 2.

Under An English Heaven by Robert Radcliffe
The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies