| Title | 7. I Believe You and I Have a Few Things in Common |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Alison Twells(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0461.07 |
| Landing page | https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0461/chapters/10.11647/obp.0461.07 |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Alison Twells |
| Publisher | Open Book Publishers |
| Published on | 2025-11-10 |
| Long abstract | Chapter 7: I Believe You and I Have a Few Things in Common, steps away from Norah’s diaries to deepen the discussion of wartime romance. This chapter makes use of two further collections of letters to sock-knitters, both in the Imperial War Museum Archive. Some of the letters to Doris Dockrill, a teenage girl in Streatham, South London, who knitted for and corresponded with men all over the world, read like dating profiles. Mollie Baker, a married woman and a member of a Maidenhead knitting bee, received long, flirtatious (and very lovely and funny) letters from two of the sailors aboard their ‘adopted’ minesweeper. I end by asking about the place of romance, in different forms, in boosting morale in WW2 and whether we need to be concerned for the young women knitters. I conclude that, for Norah at least, the sheer excitement of her budding romance over-rode any concerns she may have had about Jim’s motives or sincerity. |
| Page range | pp. 101–108 |
| Print length | 8 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