Back in May, when the world felt like it was changing every single day and even the calmest of us had anxious jitters, there were endless parallels being drawn between our era and the Second World War. The fear of an uncertain future and the urge for solidarity certainly felt familiar to readers of history. It was at that moment that I finally picked up Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry by Margaret Kennedy, which I’d providentially checked out before the libraries closed after years of wanting to read it, and found an eerily perfect book for our times.
Published in 1941, Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry is Kennedy’s memoir of the spring and summer of 1940, between the fall of France and the start of the Blitz, when she left Surrey with her children (and nanny) for a Cornish village. Already a successful novelist, this account was written not for her countrymen, who knew Kennedy’s experiences first-hand, but for the still neutral Americans. I’m not sure how well it worked as a piece of propaganda but as a record of the quickly changing times by an unusually literate recorder it is excellent.
In May and June [1940] “the whole world was in a state of chassis” to quote the Paycock. Everything was slipping and sliding and changing, and one never knew what was going to happen, or what to think, and the lifebelt of today became the straw of tomorrow. I felt bound to slap every day’s impressions and reflections down onto paper for fear I should forget them, as one tries to remember and fix a dream. Even now [August 1940], re-reading the May entries, I am astonished to find how much I have forgotten already, and how far we seem to have travelled since then.
Kennedy chronicles the everyday things – evacuees, the Home Guard, all the usual stuff of home front books – but that is not what resonated for me on reading this. Those details are too familiar from dozens of other wartime books. What is captivating here, reading this book in these times, is how well Kennedy captures people’s feelings, her own included, and how familiar they are to what we have all felt this year:
All my life I have had a great curiosity to know what it felt like to live through history. I have wondered how ordinary, everyday people, like myself, felt and thought while they were waiting for the news of Waterloo, or when they saw the beacon fires which told them the Armada had sailed. Were they horribly frightened or were they always quite sure they would win? Did they realise all that was at stake or did the little commonplaces of life still hold the foreground in their minds? Could they sleep and, if they slept, what kind of dreams did they have? What kind of jokes sustained them and what sort of prayers did they say?
Kennedy’s assessment of the government’s feelings towards its wartime citizens, desperate for information, could just have easily applied to the arrogance with which today’s British government responded to the coronavirus:
We had this whim, this caprice, to know how the war was getting along, which was a great nuisance when they were all so busy, and so a few facts were flung to us at random, and we were left to make what we liked of them.
They tried to run the war in the manner of good civil servants, and nobody has a greater contempt for public opinion than a first-rate English civil servant. Perhaps it is because we are all so meek and law-abiding. We pay our taxes promptly and without grumbling, and we fill up correctly all forms sent to us and post them on the right date. Therefore they despise us, as servants despise easy-going masters, or as children despise a father who always uncomplainingly foots the bill. Hitler understands that total war cannot be waged in that manner. He does not dare to flout public opinion, but takes the greatest pains to lie to it and flatter it. But he is not a civil servant. Our civil servants take the stand that if we have no confidence in them we can oust them, since we are a democracy. But in the meantime pray do not speak to the man at the wheel.
As with any piece of history, it is both reassuring and frustrating to see how consistently people respond in times of stress. We are predictable but we never learn. All of the responses Kennedy witnessed or saw herself exhibiting could be seen this year again, and the good, practical advice being dispensed was just the same – and just as likely to be ignored:
I still cannot sleep so I went to Dr Middleton to ask for a bromide. He used to attend all our family in the old days. He asked:
“Are ye worrying about anything?”
When I said I was worrying about Hitler coming, he said, “He won’t,” so firmly that I almost believed him. He looked me up and down very crossly and said:
“I suppose ye’ve been reading the newspapers?”
I pleaded guilty.
“What d’ye want to do that for?”
“I like to know what is happening.”
“Aw! The newspapers don’t know.”
He said if I must read a newspaper I should stick to The Times because I would find there any news there was, put in a way that would send me to sleep instead of keeping me awake. He said that when a war broke out once in the Balkans and there were scare headlines in all the streets, The Times headline said: ACTIVITY IN EUROPE.
He asked me how often I listened to the wireless.
“Four times a day.”
“And that’s three times too often. I’m sure I wish that infernal contrivance had never been invented. When I think of all the insanity that’s poured out over the ether every minute of the day, I wonder the whole human race isn’t in a lunatic asylum. And what good does it do ye to know what’s happening? Ye aren’t responsible. Ye don’t like it. Ye can’t stop it. Why think about it? Go home and fly kites with your children.”
“How many other patients have you said all this to?”
“You’re only the twenty-seventh this week.”
Despite being focused on the events of 1940, this truly felt like the most relevant thing I read in 2020. By focusing on human reactions to upheaval and uncertainty, Kennedy’s memoir is able to resonate outside of times of war and suit any period of mass turmoil. I found it deeply comforting to know how little people change, how predictable we are, and, ultimately, how resilient we can be. I’m delighted that Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry is being reissued in March by Handheld Press and can only hope that, with vaccines being rolled out across the world, reading it in 2021 will be a very different experience than it was reading in the tumultuous spring of 2020.
I have read a few Margaret Kennedy novels but not heard of this memoir, it sounds fascinating.
It is definitely fascinating! I’ve really enjoyed the novels I’ve read by her but this trumps them all.
I’ve only read one of Kennedy’s books but was very impressed with her writing. This sounds equally good!
It really is very good. It’s my favourite of all the things I’ve read by her so far.
This sounds very good. I am glad to hear it is being republished and have put it on my ever-growing list.
Excellent! Its reissue is yet another reason to look forward to 2021!