Where Stands A Winged Sentry by Margaret Kennedy

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Writing in the period between the fall of France and the Blitz Kennedy gives a particular view on the Second World War, from that moment when Allied Victory was not just uncertain but unlikely.

She talks about the way BBC news reports mix the news of the war in with other items so that the bad news does not come at you full in the face, until …

“But the day of reckoning came at last.

Ever-increasing gravity. Anybody could understand that. Forty million people gasped and woke up.” (p13)

Comparing UK and USA she reflects that “The explanation, I suppose, lies deep in history. On our side we think of liberty as something which, in theory, we have always had. Our whole progress has been to… build constitutional walls around it which will enable us better to cultivate it. On their side they think of it as something whole and indivisible which was won at one stroke, and which dwells in their Constitution.” (p118) Our laws protect rather than create our liberty.

Slightly in pasting in a discussion of Nanny’s somewhat jingoistic views Kennedy notes that even Nanny “said herself that we must try to get a United States of Europe” (p158) – it is interesting to find this phrase in use in 1940 when tend to think of it as a more recent coinage by those wishing to attack the EU project.

Kennedy, for all of her progressive views writes from a secure position of privilege – when they go down from London she is pleased to be without maids, but still has Nanny with her, and the family take lunch each day in Hotel, this simpler existence is not entirely simple. And some of her views are problematic, down-right offensive, she talks of gypsies in the manner that has got Enid Blyton black-listed by many, and then thinking about potential for Nazi invasion on neutral Ireland in attempt to encircle the UK she is extreme “...we shan’t be one little bit sorry for the Irish. A taste of the Nazis would open their eyes, after all the song and dance they have made about English oppression.” (p101) Like so many writers we have to handle their complete work with some care, and not simply airbrush bits we dislike.