Maureen is a candid, natural humorist: sometimes as good as Monica Dickens in her sharp observation

Gloriously unself-conscious, like a diary emphatically not written for publication, Entertaining Eric recreates a world we have lost - of bath salts and lending libraries, red rubber hotties and black market perfume

In Entertaining Eric, Maureen comes across as courageous, sensible, humorous, patriotic, often judgemental, one of that breed of women usually referred to as 'the backbone of England'

A fascinating, funny and touching account of one woman's war

Gutsy, humorous and a tiny bit snobby, she's a brilliant correspondent and chronicler of the times.

A wonderful, insightful illustration of the activities, thoughts and feelings of a young woman during the turbulent time of war.

Lively letters from Maureen, a Wren, to her RAF boyfriend kept their romance alive from 1941-45. Eric, who married her, was a lucky man.

Children are history's forgotten people; amidst the sound and fury of battle, as commanders decide the fate of empires, they are never seen. Yet as Nicholas Stargardt reveals in his heart-rending account of children's lives under the Nazis, to ignore them is to leave history half-written. This is an excellent book and it tells a terrible story... As Stargardt so eloquently reminds us, the tragedy is that children were part of the equation and suffered accordingly

'Nicholas Stargardt evokes the individual voices of children under Nazi rule. In re-creating their wartime experiences, he has produced a challenging new historical interpretation of the Second World War