My Dear Bessie (eBook)

A Love Story in Letters

Chris Barker, Bessie Moore (Autoren)

Simon Garfield (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015
240 Seiten
Canongate Books (Verlag)
978-1-78211-568-7 (ISBN)

Infos

In September 1943, a twenty-nine-year-old postal clerk from North London named Chris Barker found a spare hour to write to a work colleague named Bessie Moore. His letter was innocent enough, but Bessie''s response was unexpectedly enthusiastic. By their third exchange, it was clear to both of them they had ignited a passion that would not easily be extinguished. Within a few months, the couple had agreed to marry. But there were complications, such as not actually seeing each other. Barker was serving as a signalman in North Africa during the war, and their passionate romance through the mail would have to survive three years of unusual obstacles, including ruined cities, enemy capture, disdain from friends and the army censor. The couple exchanged more than 500 letters, and this book distils the most alluring, compelling and heartwarming. It''s all here, as if in a movie: bombs, lust, comical misunderstandings and deep yearning - all wrapped up in the sort of deft and elegant language that the great poets would struggle to emulate. And above all it''s a remarkable and unique example of the power of letters to transform ordinary lives.

Autor

Chris Barker joined the Post Office at fourteen, working as a messenger boy and then as a counter clerk, becoming an active trade union member. He served as a signalman in North Africa during the Second World War. Bessie Moore was a colleague of Chris Barker's at the Post Office, before working at the Foreign Office, using her training in Morse code to translate intercepted German radio messages. She was thirty when twenty-nine-year-old Chris first wrote from North Africa. Simon Garfield is the author of fourteen acclaimed books of non-fiction including To the Letter, On the Map, and Just My Type. His edited diaries from the Mass Observation Archive, Our Hidden Lives, We Are At War and Private Battles, were bestsellers.

Rezensionen

Barker and Moore start to fall in love by letter . . . And what a sweaty, lusty love it turns out to be . . . As always when snooping on written intimacies, it's the low-comedy moments that stick in your mind

Utterly wonderful

With Chris and Bessie it is the sheer, unclouded openness that captivates

An immensely affecting set of letters

These letters are magnificant

What, one longs to know, is going to happen next to Chris and Bessie? . . . The thrillingly intensive experience that they lived through will continue to resonate for as long as those sheets of paper are read

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.2.2015
• Einführung: Simon Garfield
• Verlagsort: Edinburgh
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Briefe / Tagebücher
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 1-78211-568-4 / 1782115684
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78211-568-7 / 9781782115687