Lyn Smith

Imperial War Museum

Lyn Smith's Young Voices is a poignant and compelling look at children's lives in Britain during the Second World War. During the Second World War, British children were spared the humiliation and fear of enemy occupation. None the less, they endured six years of increasing deprivation, uprootings, and long separations, and many experienced both physical and psychological suffering. They witnessed and endured intense air raids, both by conventional bombing and by the new terror weapons of V1s and V2s. Many were exposed to sights of injury, death and destruction, and at a very young age were forced to cope with the loss of friends and family at a time when counselling was unheard of. For nearly thirty years, Lyn Smith has been recording the experiences of those who were children during the war. Through the richly diverse voices and writings of over one hundred contributors, covering a wide geographical area that goes beyond the home front, Lyn Smith has written a powerful oral history of the war as seen from a child's perspective. 'What makes these accounts so compelling is that children's experiences have in their telling a particular immediacy... a vivid and moving collection.' New Statesman Lyn Smith has worked regularly as an oral history interviewer for the Imperial War Museum's Sound Archive for nearly 30 years. Using her own important contribution to the public archive, she has researched and written several books, including Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust and Pacifists in Action. She is also a lecturer in International Politics and International Affairs, and teaches at Regents College in London and at Webster University in St Louis, USA. Lyn Smith lives in Lewes, East Sussex.

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