Kirjahaku

C.R. Ashbee was, some would say, the key man in the British Arts and Crafts movement during the early decades of the 20th century. Regarded as heir to William Morris in political belief and design reform, Ashbee (and his Guild of Handicraft) gained international fame in his own time and remains a legend today. While much has been written about him, little has been said of his wife. Now Felicity Ashbee breaks the silence in a book about her mother. The book depicts Janet Ashbee as a gifted woman of emotional warmth, strength and unconventionality, all of which enhanced her husband's work. An accomplished writer and thinker in her own right, Janet Ashbee's life revolved around great historic issues that still resonate to this day: the socially conscious Arts and Crafts movement, the role of women in contemporary affairs, and embattled ethnic relationships in the Middle East - not to mention marriage and sexual orientation, predicated upon her husband's vibrant and well-known homosexuality.

The year 1919 in Jerusalem marked the conclusion of hundreds of years of Ottoman rule and the beginning of British occupation, a period of great change that would transform the city. Felicity Ashbee's captivating memoir gives the reader a truly original portrait of life in post-WWI Jerusalem as seen through the eyes of a spirited young English girl. The daughter of Charles Robert Ashbee, a disciple of William Morris and prominent player in the Arts and Crafts Movement, Ashbee spent four years, from age six to ten, living in Jerusalem while her father spearheaded the effort to architecturally and artistically restore the city. That golden period of restoration and peaceful mingling of faiths would be brief, thus imbuing the Ashbees' time in Jerusalem with a retrospective poignancy.Vividly capturing a child's ingenuous perceptions of place, Ashbee's story recreates classic moments of childhood experience against richly detailed views of her surroundings. Yet it also resonates with constant undertones of radical ideas, from the Ashbees' own socialist tendencies and engagement in the modernist art movement to the establishment of religion-centered political factions that would erode much of Charles Ashbee's work soon after his departure. It is this union of child's-eye viewpoint and historical backdrop that makes Ashbee's work such a compelling memoir.

In her vivid memoir For the Duration, Ashbee givves a candid, often humorous account of her experiences during World War II as she rose through the ranks in Britain’s Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). Joining shortly after the outbreak of the war in 1939, Ashbee began in the nerve center of the Royal Air Force’s (RAF’s) battle with the enemy, soon advanced to the intelligence department, and later served as an administrator at various RAF stations. She relates how she and other WAAFs coped with a war machine that desperately needed the help of women but whose all-male leadership did not quite know how to manage the sudden influx of females.Throughout her lively narrative she limns the impact of war on individuals and families from all classes and walks of life, both in and out of the military. As a radar teller, she tracked Rudolph Hess as he flew across the North Sea. As a writer and producer of original ""shows"" in her offduty hours, she brought forth amateur theatricals at several RAF stations, dispelling much of the incredible monotony and boredom of duty in remote outposts. Ashbee’s vitality infuses this memoir as it moves from the ""phony"" war and the Battle of Britain, to intelligence and duties as an officer to, at last, the victory celebrations in London.