4. A Poke in the Eye for Hitler

Chapter 4: A Poke in the Eye for Hitler, opens with Norah’s missing diary for her sock-knitting year of 1940. I draw on a range of alternative sources: Norah’s 1939 diary entries for the start of the war; newspaper headlines from 1940 which detail key events (the end of the Phoney War, Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, and sock knitting) from national and local perspectives; and an oral history interview with Mary Belton, a schoolfriend of Norah’s, who had also knitted socks for the war effort. The chapter ends with an imagined vignette, based on Mary’s account, as a lady from the WVS addresses an assembly of girls, urging them to pick up their pins. Already a proficient knitter, Norah likes the idea of knitting socks for sailors.