One Family's War by Muriel Gane Pushman (Tempus £12.99)

THERE will come a time when the last living links with the Second World War will be no longer be with us and the story of the conflict consigned to history books.

In this year of anniversaries, those whose job it has been to collect and collate have quite wisely concentrated on the ordinary man and woman... the people, who throughout six long years of blood, sweat and tears toppled the greatest tyrant the world had ever seen.

This is one such story. Written in the style of a journal, devoid of decoration or deviation from the central plot, One Family's War charts the fortunes of a British family from the gathering storm clouds at the end of the 1930s through the early struggles, and finally, to triumph over the odds.

The Second World War was a time of hot summers with blue skies and ghastly winters of almost unbearable cold, which somehow provided a metaphor for the times, marking the highs and lows endured during those dangerous years.

Grainy photographs of impossibly young men and women, resplendent in their uniforms, leap from these pages, youthful smiles held in the permafrost of the camera shutter's moment.

There is an immortal nobility about these people. Their gaze meets the reader's eye achieving instant contact, their faces lit up with optimism despite the reality that the world could have gone up in flames at any moment.

It's all there. The heartache and the bad times, days of hope and glory... we'll meet again, bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover.

This is an uplifting read, not only for the special generation which won through despite everything, but also for those lucky enough to have arrived after the guns fell silent.

John Phillpott