Digging for victory (again)

As the battle with the invisible enemy, Covid-19, sweeps across the world, Leslie Bliss looks back into history to see how today's reaction to a global crisis — including a huge shift back to the land — compares to World War II

- Leslie Bliss

“I may not remember what I had for dinner last night, but I remember the start of World War II,” says Jennifer Farnfield, aged 85, as she recalls the 3 September 1939, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced in a BBC radio broadcast that Britain was at war with Germany. “I remember dad saying, ‘bloody war is on; that will bugger everything’.”

More than 80 years later, on the 23 March 2020, PM Boris Johnson addressed the nation on the BBC in an equally sombre broadcast, setting out strict new measures to protect people from a new disease sweeping across the entire world at terrifying speed.

Panic buying had started several days before. Social media was flooded with images of empty supermarket shelves where loo rolls used to be stacked neatly, row after row, and where hand sanitiser bottles used to stand, bottle behind bottle. Now, several weeks into the lockdown, and you have to queue for half an hour merely to get through the supermarket’s sliding entry doors.

There were no supermarkets back in 1939, but there were shortages, some similar, others creating different challenges.

Jennifer remembers rationing clearly, despite growing up on a productive 300-acre farm that her father rented at the foot of Leith Hill near Dorking in Surrey.