Green Hands

Name: Green Hands
Brand: Hachette UK
Availability: InStock
Author: Barbara Whitton
ISBN: 9781472282804

Author: Barbara Whitton

Narrator: Katy Sobey

Unabridged: 7 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Headline

Published: 09/17/2020

Categories: Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Women, Fiction, Historical Fiction, History, Wars, World War Ii, Friendship

Synopsis

It is 1943, and a month into their service as Land Girls, Bee, Anne and Pauline are dispatched to a remote farm in rural Scotland. Here they are introduced to the realities of 'lending a hand on the land', as back-breaking work and inhospitable weather mean they struggle to keep their spirits high.

Soon one of the girls falters, and Bee and Pauline receive a new posting to a Northumberland dairy farm. Detailing their friendship, daily struggles and romantic intrigues with a lightness of touch, Barbara Whitton's autobiographical novel paints a sometimes funny, sometimes bleak picture of time spent in the Women's Land Army during the Second World War.

"Tales from the home front are always more authentic when written from personal experience, as is the case here. Barbara Whitton evokes the highs and lows, joys and agonies of being a Land Girl in the Second World War." -- Julie Summers

"Witty, warm and hugely endearing, Barbara Whitton s Green Hands is full of engaging characters, burgeoning friendships and pure hard-graft. A lovely novel for anyone interested in wartime Britain, it leaves the reader with renewed admiration for the indefatigable work of the Women s Land Army." --AJ Pearce

(P)2020 Headline Publishing Group Limited

About Barbara Whitton

MARGARET HAZEL WATSON (writing under the pseudonym Barbara Whitton) was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1921. She was educated at the Church High Girls School in Newcastle, and later sent to St Leonards School in St Andrews. Due to study Art in Paris, her training was curtailed by the outbreak of the Second World War.Having volunteered for the Women's Land Army (WLA) in 1939, she worked as a Land Girl for around a year before moving to the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) and later joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) as a driver, where she remained for the duration of the war. Her novel Green Hands is a fictionalised account of her time spent as a Land Girl, detailing the back-breaking hard work and intensity of her experience with good humour and an enchanting lightness of touch. During her time with the ATS she met her husband Pat Chitty and they were married in 1941. After the war, she wrote a number of accounts of her wartime experience and retained an interest in art, literature and horticulture throughout her life. She died in 2016.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Emily

3.5 rounded up. Originally published in 1943, this lightweight account of ten months or so in the life of a land girl reminded me a lot of the semi-autobiographical works of Monica Dickens, but is perhaps a notch less mean-spirited (though there is plenty of class condescension). It's mostly about t......more

Goodreads review by Kerri - Book Off I’m Reading

Green Hands is a fictionalised account of the author’s real life experience as a Land Girl in 1939 and is told from Barbara Whitton’s, or Bee’s, point of view. She tells us the stories of her time working on a farm in Scotland and then onto a dairy farm in Northumberland. The arduous work and the phy......more

Goodreads review by Julie

Being a Land Girl during the Second World War was not an easy option, and certainly not the clean, picturesque harvesting of the posters. This is a fictionalised memoir of the experiences of Margaret Hazel Watson who wrote under the pen name of Barbara Whitton. This book was first published in 1943......more

Goodreads review by The Literary Shed

The latest of the IWM Wartime Classics series, Barbara Whitton's charming Green Hands opens in 1943 and follows protagonist Bee as she and her pals work the farmlands of Britain, stepping into jobs previously fulfilled by the menfolk now away fighting for King and country. The Women’s Land Army prov......more

Quotes

Few other novels of the war describe the grinding claustrophobia, violence and lethal danger of being in a tank crew with the stark vividness of Peter Elstob. It's possible to almost smell the fumes and sweat, while the intimate detail of operating such a beast and the camaraderie of the crew are utterly compelling. This is a forgotten classic that deserves to be read and read. James Holland, Historian, author and TV Presenter