My Dear Bessie by Chris Barker and Bessie Moore, edited by Simon Garfield

We’ve had a glimpse of this captivating love story before. A scant selection of the wartime letters between Chris Barker and Bessie Moore were interleaved in To the Letter, Simon Garfield’s excellent exploration of written correspondence. They were there to illustrate the power of letters in ordinary life, showing in detail a love story that developed almost entirely by letter during the second world war. The Chris and Bessie letters were so popular that Garfield has edited the whole collection to give us a full, immersive view of their historical and emotional importance.

It’s a delight, from the hesitancy of the first letters to the deep, fervent and repeated declarations of love and affection later. There are throwaway details of wartime living – for instance, how many cigarettes you could swap for an egg in Egypt (ten). Chris returns quite often to Bessie’s breasts – even after Garfield's extensive editing – and then moves on to planning their married life after the war. Both are fluent, engaging writers and we pass swiftly, as Garfield says in the introduction, ‘from overwhelming physical compulsion to domestic furnishings.’

But it is the openness of the letters that leaves the lasting impression – you get a sense that writing these letters was an opportunity to communicate more freely and deeply than would have been possible elsewhere, even in the most intimate whisperings of pillow talk. [Galen O'Hanlon]