Mary Morris

Mary Mulry moved to London in 1940 to begin her career as a nurse and kept her diary in spite of strict rules against such diaries being kept while on duty. After the birth of her four children, Mary returned to nursing in Brighton in the 1960s. She and her husband Malcolm, whom she met at the end of the war, eventually settled in the Wye Valley and remained happily married for over fifty years until Mary's death in 1997. Her wartime uniform and diaries are now held in the Imperial War Museum, London, and are published here for the first time.

Carol Acton is Associate Professor of English, St Jerome's University at the University of Waterloo, Ontario with a research area in war writing, especially autobiographical works. She is the author of GRIEF IN WARTIME: PRIVATE PAIN, PUBLIC DISCOURSE and WORKING IN A WORLD OF HURT, a book on medical personnel, war and trauma with Dr Jane Potter from Oxford Brookes University. She discovered Mary's diaries in the Imperial War Museum archives.