Nella Last's War established a housewife and mother from Barrow-in-Furness as one of the most powerful and moving voices of the Second World War, and inspired the award-winning television drama Housewife, 49. In this next instalment of her unique diaries, Nella Last describes how ordinary people re-built their lives after the war was over.

While the Allies' victory was a cause for hope and celebration, much privation and anxiety remained. 'The only peace is that there are no active hostilities,' Nella wrote, 'but the corrosion of the war years is eating deeper into civilisation.' In her sensitive and playful account of daily life in the austerity years, written like her war diaries for the Mass Observation project, Nella Last captures the thoughts and feelings of post-war Britain.

'If the historians could see clearly enough, this could well be called the age of frustration ... after all, for ordinary people, it's the little things that count, whether for good or ill.' Nella Last