Jan Struther (birth name Joyce Anstruther) wrote short stories about the fictional Mrs. Miniver for the London Times in the 1930s, and these were collected into a book which became the basis for the famous film starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon.
The 1942 edition of Mrs. Miniver included the story "Mrs. Miniver Makes a List," which was written for a Red Cross fundraising anthology called The Queen's Own Book of the Red Cross.
In her 1942 introduction, Struther writes directly to American readers, who, since Mrs. Miniver was first published, have experienced Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the Second World War. Struther says she's included "Mrs. Miniver Makes a List" as the British and Americans now share the experience of trying to make the best Christmas they can with husbands and fathers away to war and parents worried about their children's safety and well-being.
I thought that people who are trying to make the best of the 2021 holiday season might get something from "Mrs. Miniver Makes a List," so I've read it aloud and put the story up on YouTube. The story was written in 1938, so I thought a few notes on the language might be in order. There's a reference to a child's "Red Indian" costume which I changed to "Indian," which is a little better anyway. The initials "S.A.," which one character puts into a letter, stand for "Sex Appeal." In that same letter, a character makes a joke using the word "dactyl," which in this case means a three-syllable form used in metered poetry. And the word "trochaic" was one I'd heard but had to look up; it turns out to be another kind of meter in poetry.
I hope Struther's story gives you, Reader, a sense that we'll all muddle through somehow.
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