Mrs. Miniver

The beloved classic novel of an English housewife bravely enduring WWII—the basis for the Academy Award–winning film starring Greer Garson.

Winston Churchill once remarked that Mrs. Miniver, the fictional British housewife featured in Jan Struther’s newspaper columns about quotidian English life, did more for the Allied cause than a flotilla of battleships. As tensions rose across Europe, Mrs. Miniver’s domestic concerns expanded from automobiles and Christmas shopping to include gas masks, keeping calm, and carrying on.

An international sensation when it was first published, this novelized collection of those columns won America’s heart—and broad public support for entering WWII. Mrs. Miniver’s story was so essential to Allied morale that when William Wyler’s film adaption was made, President Roosevelt ordered it rushed to theaters.

Jan Struther was the pen name of Joyce Anstruther, later Joyce Maxtone Graham, and finally Joyce Placzek, a writer remembered for her character Mrs. Miniver and a number of hymns, including “Lord of All Hopefulness.” During the 1930s, Struther became known as the author of stylish poems and essays for Punch, and Peter Fleming of the Times asked her to create a character whose doings would enliven the Court Page of the paper: “an ordinary sort of woman who leads an ordinary sort of life—rather like yourself.” The collected articles, which had become enormously popular, were published as Mrs. Miniver in 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. Soon afterward, Struther went to lecture in America, where Mrs. Miniver became a much-loved Hollywood film starring Greer Garson.