Debs at War

Debs at War by Anne de Courcy could perhaps just as easily be titled Downton Abbey: The World War II Years. It reads like an anthropology text (and given that the only library copies I could find in the entire state were at large universities, it likely is), but is a fascinating account of the work the young women of the aristocracy (formerly debutantes, or debs, in the pre-war years) did during the war. There is nursing, of course, but the range of jobs these women held is incredibly varied from assembling aircraft in factories to running homes for evacuated children to breaking German codes in the deepest secrecy. Many, like the future Queen Elizabeth, drove and maintained ambulances and other critical motor vehicles. (Princess Diana's aunt, Lady Anne Spencer, worked for the navy, plotting convoys of ships.)

Debs at War also provides a stark look at war life across Great Britain: the rations, the air raids, the daily grind of relentless war. Although in style it's much more academic than many non-fiction books that detail episodes from the same era (for example Operation Mincemeat or Lost in Shangri-La), it is still well worth reading for anyone with even a passing interest in World War II, and doubly so if that interest extends to how all the Lady Sybils reacted a generation after Sybil Crawley.