| Title | 6. Dearest Dimples |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Alison Twells(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0461.06 |
| Landing page | https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0461/chapters/10.11647/obp.0461.06 |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Alison Twells |
| Publisher | Open Book Publishers |
| Published on | 2025-11-10 |
| Long abstract | Chapter 6: Dearest Dimples, explores Jim’s early letters to Norah, sent between March and June 1941. We learn about his family, his life aboard a minesweeper, his interests in sport, music and films, and we experience him as a cheeky chap who enjoys banter and is keen to push boundaries. I explore evidence of feeling and emotion in Norah’s diary responses when Jim briefly stops writing in the summer of 1941 and explore their correspondence in the context of research into the place of romance in young women’s lives in the 1930s and 1940s. At the end of the chapter, I ask what Jim’s pen-friendship with Norah meant to him. Is she, as he claims, his only girl correspondent, holding a special place in his affections? Or are her letters trophies among his fellow sailors, read out in the mess to bawdy comments, her photograph passed round like a tin of sweets? |
| Page range | pp. 91–100 |
| Print length | 10 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
Alison Twells is Professor of Social and Cultural History at Sheffield Hallam University. A widely published scholar, her work primarily explores 19th-century local and global history, with a focus on empire, antislavery and missions, and C19th and C20th women’s life-writing. Her academic publications include The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class: the ‘heathen’ at home and overseas, 1792-1850 (Palgrave, 2009) and Women in Transnational History: Gendering the Local and the Global (Routledge, 2016)), and numerous articles and book chapters. Her recent publications include contributions to History Workshop Journal, The Historical Journal, and Women’s History Review, focusing on creative historical methods, servicemen’s letters and wartime intimacy, and explorations of emotion in ordinary pocket diaries. Always uneasy with academics writing only for each other, Alison is actively engaged in public and creative history initiatives. She has been a pioneer in developing community-facing history in UK universities and has written resources for history education in schools and a city walk about the life in late-C19th Sheffield of activist Edward Carpenter. She has talked about Norah, writing working-class lives, and history, fiction and life-writing, at various events. See www.alisontwells.com