The letters were written by my grandmother, Emily Mackintosh, to her brother Len who was serving on board HMS Kimberley, a destroyer in the Royal Navy.
Her other brother, Tom was in the Royal Marines.
Thankfully they both survived the Second World War and I think Len must have returned the letters to his sister when he arrived back home.
The letters give a snapshot of life in the Northamptonshire village of Milton Malsor during the Second World War but also my great-uncle’s time away.
My grandmother thanks him for a parcel he had sent and she wrote, “That ‘Taj Mahal’ must be a building or temple or something. It must be a marvellous place to have worked on things. Well Len you don’t know how thrilled we are with those things. I can’t thank you enough. It was nice of you to think of me like that. It is nice to be able to have something from different parts of the world. Places where we at home will never visit. And that novelty little hand bag. I am dying to go out so I can show it off. I bet there won’t be many got one like me. I feel I want to wear those pyjamas outdoors. Nobody will see them in bed!”
