Army Wives: a new book by Midge Gillies

Midge Gillies, Academic Director of Creative Writing at ICE, has written a new book which documents the experience of British 'army wives' through history.

From Crimea to life under the British Raj, from the First World War to Afghanistan, Midge uses first-hand accounts, letters and diaries to tell the fascinating and varied stories of the women who lived through these life-changing events.

Army Wives (Aurum Press, 2016) explores all aspects of army life: from the impact life-changing injury – mental or physical – has on the family to the final blow of death itself; from the séances, public memorials and deaths in a foreign field of the Great War to the modern media coverage of flag-draped coffins returning home by military plane.

Midge goes on to examine the struggle for a normal life: how wives communicate with their husbands in letters and coded messages or by Skype and texts – and the everyday pressures of being a modern army wife, whether living in barracks or trying to maintain a normal home life outside ‘the patch’.

Above all, Army Wives examines what it really means to be part of the ‘army family’.

About the author

Midge Gillies has written six books including highly acclaimed biographies of the record-breaking pilot Amy Johnson, and Edwardian music hall star, Marie Lloyd. In Waiting for Hitler, Britain on the Brink of Invasion she recreated the tension and fear that permeated the summer of 1940. She studied History at Cambridge and has written for a wide range of publications including the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Independent and the Los Angeles Times.

She is Academic Director of Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education, and teaches on a wide range of programmes, including the Certificate and Diploma courses in Creative Writing.