There's No Story There: Wartime Writing, 1944-1945

During World War II, conscripted workers at Statevale, a rural munitions factory in England, are making shells and bombs, and all cigarettes and matches are handed in before they can enter the danger zone. The Introduction by Lucy Scholes explores this trilogy by Holden against her life as a novelist and Bright Young Thing in the 1930s and as a wartime journalist.

Format: Paperback / softback
Publication date: 23 March 2021
Publisher: Handheld Press

There is a story about the lives of conscripted workers at Statevale, an enormous rural munitions factory somewhere in England during the Second World War. The workers are making shells and bombs, and no chances can be taken with so much high explosive around. Trolleys are pushed slowly, workers wear rubber-soled soft shoes, and put protective cream on their faces. Any kind of metal, moving fast, can cause a spark, and that would be fatal.

All cigarettes and matches are handed in before the workers can enter the danger zone, and they wear asbestos suits.

When a journalist is asked why she hasn't written about this secret factory, she shrugs and says, "There's no story there." With so much death just waiting to happen, why aren't the workers' stories told? The Introduction by Lucy Scholes explores this wartime trilogy by Holden against her life as a novelist and Bright Young Thing in the 1930s, and as a wartime journalist.

Weight: 334g
Dimension: 135 x 216 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781912766369
Edition number: New ed