Love in War

Love in War is a love story of its time. Joanna and Johnnie were born in South London in the shadow of the Great War and were still growing up when the narrative begins in 1936 during Hitler’s rise in Nazi Germany. It ends ten years later in 1946, when Johnnie is demobilised.

Despite the committed intensity of the five-year relationship, they spent only forty-nine days together. Thus, Love in War is more about managing life apart than being together. The story moves between London and Berlin (where Joanna visits in 1938 and her dear schoolfriend, Ursula lives out the war) and the horrific theatres of war in North Africa and Southern Italy, which have disastrous effects on Johnnie and render him almost unrecognisable on his return to England after the war.

As the story closes, it is evident that there are no winners, just losers. Perhaps it is love that emerges as the only victor. The future is uncertain for all concerned. They have almost nothing to show for the last five years; just time lost. There remains a rather modest ray of hope - as Johnnie says at the end, ’but we are alive.

Michael Farthing’s career has been as an academic physician in the UK and USA. In addition he has conducted medical research in several low-income countries including India, Zambia, South Africa and Belize and has written many scientific papers and medical books. Since leaving medicine, he has published a critique of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings and a ’memoire plus’, Finding India, which explored the emergence of modern, independent India tracked across the last fifty years through the eyes of a foreigner.

He is an Honorary Professor at University College London, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex and lives between London and Sussex. His wife is a radiologist and they have two sons, an artist and an actor.