There’s No Story There: Wartime Writing, 1944-1945

There’s No Story There is about the lives of conscripted workers at Statevale, an enormous rural munitions factory somewhere in England during the Second World War. The workers are making shells and bombs, and no chances can be taken with so much high explosive around. Trolleys are pushed slowly, workers wear rubber-soled soft shoes, and put protective cream on their faces. Any kind of metal, moving fast, can cause a spark, and that would be fatal. All cigarettes and matches are handed in before the workers can enter the danger zone, and they wear asbestos suits.

‘Inez Holden is a great lost voice from the literature of the Second World War. These pieces of fictionalised reportage place her on the same shelf of Forties-era writing as Julian Maclaren-Ross and Henry Green.’ - D J Taylor, author of The Prose Factory, and Lost Girls. Love, War and Literature, 1939-1951.

‘There’s No Story There is a nuanced, understated and incisive portrait of wartime industry. It’s a classic of observational writing and a vital debunking of people’s war mythology.’ - Gill Plain, Professor of English Literature, University of St Andrews