How well would we cope with rationing?
I’ve always been fascinated by the Home Front, the enlistment of every man, woman and child in the British Isles in an effort to beat Hitler through food rationing, making do and mending, salvage, growing your own and basically making the most of scarce resources with elbow grease and endless ingenuity. I’ve just read Eggs or Anarchy by William Sitwell, a biography of Lord Woolton who was the Minister of Food for much of the Second World War. He was in charge of ensuring everyone got fed, and improving nutritional standards was one of his aims. It’s unusual to get the ‘behind-the-scenes’ view, and the political situation wasn’t as united as may appear from our rose-tinted histories.
Now I’ve moved on to A Green and Pleasant Land by Ursula Buchan, which is about the role of Britain’s gardeners during WW2. Apparently they had to do without the benefit of weather forecasts on the radio – they were stopped at the beginning of the war due to fears they might help the Germans!
Obviously I am a firm believer in Digging For Victory, although I would have found the list of acceptable crops very restrictive! The neighbours would no doubt have muttered about the weird (and not always very productive) things growing in the garden, although they would have been very jealous of the mammoth onions I’ve grown this year
Read more on theunconventionalgardener.com
