Frances Donaldson: A Woman's War: Letters to a Soldier in the Second World War

Frances Donaldson would not have called herself a feminist, but her strong character, independence and determination make this almost a feminist tract, showing in detail how much a woman can achieve in difficult circumstances. She not only showed determination but took on physical tasks which most modern men would find difficult if not impossible. 

She overcame the opposition of the members of the man's world in which she found herself and rose to top the ranks of farmers in the war, to be invited to broadcast to Britain and America and to write 2 books about it - working at night after a full day's hard activity on the farm. Her letters to her husband Jack are sometimes tearful, often sad but in the end the letters of a fighter, a perfectionist and an achiever.

Robert Boyd wrote:
"Female farming in "The War". A laughing, crying, gripping, writer-to-be's letters to her husband through five long years of separation. She, a famous playwright's daughter from high society turned farmer, responds with candour and can-do to male dominance in the cowshed and the realities of the woman's land army volunteers. A moving must-read of feminism two generations before its time coupled with the real smell of Britain before and after Dunkirk. The fear and the relief." Robert Boyd