Love Lessons: A Wartime Diary by Joan Wyndham

Love Lessons: A Wartime Diary by Joan Wyndham (Heinemann / 1985)

' Through the pages of this journal, begun in the summer of 1939 when she was almost 17, Joan Wyndham charts the progress of her education in sex, love and life among Chelsea's Bohemian community of the wartime years.

Strictly brought up by a religious mother and her eccentric female companion, the author throws off her convent past and girlish ways when she meets a dissolute German sculptor at a party and falls in love with him. He introduces her to a noisy society far removed from her own - a world of late nights, loose talk and easy sex, and a raffish community of painters, poets and poseurs among whom her innocence makes her a celebrity.

On the advice of her new friends Joan takes up painting, only to find her attic studio swarming with the exotic low-life of Redcliffe Road. As the diary comes to its close in May 1942, the mood has changed. London is in ruins, old friends are dead, and lovers are betrayed. Two years older and a lifetime wiser, the author has volunteered for the WAAF. The girl has become a woman, and the world in which she came of age has gone forever.'

First edition hardcover. Some very minor bumping to bottom edges of boards but on the whole this book remains in very good condition with clean, unmarked pages.  

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 204
Condition: VERY GOOD

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