Young childless widow Clara Button is doing her bit for the war effort, running Britain’s only Underground Shelter Library.... Our barbarous foes may be hell-bent on burning London to the ground, but beneath the city’s surface, Mrs. Button calmly carries on stamping books and ensuring everyone has a thumping good read to take their mind off the bombs." True story from the East End of London during WWII: The Bethnel Green library was destroyed by German bombs during the Blitz, and much of the surrounding neighborhood was destroyed as well. In a bit of serendipity, the Bethnel Green Tube station had not yet been put into service, so the space became the underground home for the community's displaced people. There was a cafe, a theater, ranks upon ranks of bunk beds, and a library.

History isn’t about dates and battlefields, leaders, and royalty. It’s about ordinary people getting on with the business of living, in spite of such unforgiving odds. And somehow in the process always managing to hold hard to hope. This novel is inspired by real life events that took place at Bethnal Green during WWII and saw the half-finished tube station turned into a fully-functioning subterranean community sleeping up to five thousand and served by an astonishing array of facilities including a library. The story opens in March 1944 when widowed Children’s librarian, Clara Button, finds herself at the helm of the underground library having stepped in after the overground library was bombed in the first week of the Blitz and her boss died. Ably assisted by her best friend, irrepressible Ruby, both set aside their own heartache to keep the community library seventy-eight feet underground operating whilst the bombing continues. Alongside issuing books, chatting to the lonely, running a nightly storytime for the children sleeping down the shelter and a reading group that causes a stir, there are laughter, tears, company and moral support for all. But for all Ruby’s chutzpah and Clara’s steely determination both have their own personal tragedies, specifically the death of Clara’s husband at Dunkirk five years earlier and Ruby’s sister’s death a year earlier in the fatal crushing incident on the steps that house the Bethnal Green tube shelter. Both of these traumas are memorably well-explored and resonate throughout the story. The Little War Time Library is such a touching and heart-wrenching story based on true events. I think the fact it is based on true events adds even more emotion and real emotion to this book. Informative and enlightening, heart-wrenching yet hopeful, this is a story that will stay with me. Fans of historical fiction and stories revolving around libraries would certainly enjoy this novel. Why was this library here? Who worked there? How did the library survive? BookTrail locations in The Little Wartime Library

Bethan Green’s magical library with Kate Thompson

I’ve become rather jaded by book titles containing the word ‘little’ but here it is incredibly apt.

This is such a beautiful, heartwarming, heartbreaking, and inspirational book on so many different levels. So many families are homeless and a safe place is made for them to live underground, five thousand three tiered bunks are installed, it has a café, nursery, theater and a library. Clara’s a trained librarian and Ruby isn't your typical assistant, between them they make a great team and devise ingenious ways of lending out as many books as they can. Visiting factories and delivering books to shift workers, holding a nightly story time for the children, starting a boozy book club for their mothers, and Clara sends a letter to Canada asking for donations of children’s classic books. Heartbreakingly, that home was tinged with horror one night in March 1943 when 173 people died in a human crush on theuneven steps down to the shelter. ARP wardens worked alongside housewives and boy scouts to save the injured. Mrs Chumbley wrenched children free from the crush with such force their shoes were left behind. It was three hours before the last casualty was pulled out. During WWII, the unfinished Bethnal Green Station not only provided shelter to five thousand people who slept in the bunkers constructed in the tunnels – a safe haven amid the devastation caused by the Blitz but also housed a theatre that hosted opera and ballet, a coffee shop, doctor’s quarters and a wartime nursery and a library.From Sunday Times bestselling novelist Kate Thompson, The Little Wartime Library is a captivating work of historical fiction, inspired by one of the greatest resistance stories of WWII. There's an assumption - an unfair one - that if you work in a library, you are a cardigan-wearing introvert. Bethnal Green Library, where my novel is set, is one hundred years old this year, so I set myself the goal of interviewing one hundred library workers. From post-war librarians, to feminist and activist librarians, school librarians to Britain's oldest library reading volunteer, qualified and unqualified, all share one thing in common, a passionate belief in the power of books and reading to change lives. But this book is so much more than that. I do not think enough of this review can do it justice. Clara, Billy, and Ruby are such stunning characters. They are patriots, courageous, passionate, realistic, imperfect, and are excellent in this story. This is such a beautiful story, set during World War 2 it shows the strength and courage that a librarian goes to, to make sure that people have books to read and what’s more friendship and support through some of the toughest times England has seen, when the Bethnal Green Library is bombed during the blitz, librarian Clara Button creates a new library underground in the disused Bethnal Green tube station along with thousands of bunk beds and many more services for the people of Bethnal Green, this was a book I found very hard to put down. With a cast of colourful East Enders the novel is a deep dive into an unrecognisable time and place. Running throughout the story is an emphasis on reading for pleasure and as entertainment and escapism to take one away from the harsh realities of the wider world. Clara soon finds herself at odds with the posh library committee manager when he implies she would be doing a better service to keep her patrons away from romance and point them towards more educational fare. This is the first of many battles that Clara and Ruby have with their snooty boss, Mr Pinkerton-Smythe, who has the temerity to dismiss Clara as “just a Children’s librarian” and soon find himself on the wrong side of half of Bethnal Green! Chapters alternate between focusing on Clara and Ruby and, as two very different but quite complex characters, this works well and keeps the story moving along at a pace. Although both women find themselves with male admirers it’s far from plain sailing with turmoil aplenty along the way, and not just in their love lives.