A Green and Pleasant Land: How England’s Gardeners Fought the Second World War, by Ursula Buchan – review

Here are some statistics about wartime fruit- and vegetable-growing in England which this book tells us. In 1942-3, there were 1,750,000 allotments, amounting to 100,000 acres, or an area the size of Rutland. But in a 1944 survey, it was discovered that only 34 per cent of urban gardens were growing fruit and vegetables, and only 10.9 per cent of households cultivated an allotment. The north-west of England turned out the worst figures, with only 28 per cent of households growing vegetables. As Ursula Buchan writes, ‘Picking sun-warmed greenhouse tomatoes to add to a salad is a pleasure; weeding round shot-holed brassicas on a windswept allotment is not.’ And this was what weary English householders worked out for themselves, as the war wore on.

Another slightly dispiriting statistic: in the chapter called ‘Fiercely Stirring Cauldrons’, about the 4,500 jam-making centres run by strong-armed women who heroically produced 1,670 tons of the stuff in 1941, Buchan tells us that all this effort made less than 0.5