The letters are, as one of their editors notes, close to 'an uninhibited and unstoppable stream of consciousness . . . written from air-raid shelters, and office desks, on buses and station platforms, in hotel foyers and under hair-dryers'. The 1,400 letters were uncovered by chance in an eBay auction by their future editor and transcriber, David McGowan.

A perceptive foreword by Oswyn Murray, for whose father Alexander worked in the Air Ministry during the war, describes the letters as 'an immense literary discovery', but what they are above all is superbly entertaining.

As the course of [Alexander's] life shifted abruptly and against her will that year, like the lives of so many at the onset of World War II, Alexander responded with unflappable humor and irrepressible intellect, both of which shine through in Love in the Blitz.

Once in a while, just at the right moment, a truly gorgeous real-life love story appears out of the blue, or in this case...the wonderful (and superlatively edited) seat-of-the-pants romance of Eileen Alexander and fellow Cambridge student Gershon Ellenbogen.

[The letters] run the gamut of chatty (sometimes catty), ruminative, plaintive, and frank, and readers will appreciate Alexander’s breadth of literary knowledge.

Alexander’s adoration for Gershon shines through in every letter, and so do her observations on the opinions and foibles of the people around her. You’ll laugh out loud at unbuttoned descriptions of friends, family, and coworkers while learning more than you’d expect about life in London leading up and during to World War II.

It makes for a fascinating subjective account of an individual life over these years, unfiltered by any ambitions of literary posterity or knowingness. The frankness and guilelessness of these letters grant them an astonishing authenticity.

Deftly edited by McGowan and with informative chapter introductions by Crane, the letters offer a moving, sharply etched chronicle of wartime London.

This collection of letters written by literary translator Alexander...to her future husband, Gershon Ellenbogen, between July 1939 and March 1946 proves a remarkable aggregate of public and personal history.