Approaching retirement from the civil service and at the age of 60, Walter Musto was looking forward to the quiet life with his wife Alice Mary and their dog Nell. He started writing his diary on January 1st 1939 and carried on throughout the entirety of the war years. Walter had the vision and intellectual prowess to document the daily goings on of the most cataclysmic events that the World had ever seen, from a perspective both inside and outside his doorstep. Within his diaries we are witness to his observations on the climate of destruction across England, especially London where he is travelling to work every day and enduring the effects of night raids during the blitz. Seeing how London and Londoners picked up the pieces and got on with the task of carrying on and maintaining some kind of structure of society and business whilst London and its transport hub was being battered like never before in history. As Walter was too old for active service, he joined the East Molesey ARP unit feeling that he was at least doing something active to help the war effort. He was a firm believer in the simple pleasures of life; gardening, his love of nature and wildlife and most fundamentally adhered to the practice of the wartime ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign. Walter’s mischievous and often hilarious portraits on Englishness and observations on human kind capture the spirit of a country at war, whereby his first-hand harrowing accounts of the progress of war and the destruction of his beloved country are also juxtaposed with the trivia, traumas and detail of domestic life.
The War & Uncle Walter
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Approaching retirement from the civil service and at the age of 60, Walter Musto was looking forward to the quiet life with his wife Alice Mary and their dog Nell. He started writing his diary on January 1st 1939 and carried on throughout the entirety of the war years. Walter had the vision and intellectual prowess to document the daily goings on of the most cataclysmic events that the World had ever seen, from a perspective both inside and outside his doorstep. Within his diaries we are witness to his observations on the climate of destruction across England, especially London where he is travelling to work every day and enduring the effects of night raids during the blitz. Seeing how London and Londoners picked up the pieces and got on with the task of carrying on and maintaining some kind of structure of society and business whilst London and its transport hub was being battered like never before in history. As Walter was too old for active service, he joined the East Molesey ARP unit feeling that he was at least doing something active to help the war effort. He was a firm believer in the simple pleasures of life; gardening, his love of nature and wildlife and most fundamentally adhered to the practice of the wartime ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign. Walter’s mischievous and often hilarious portraits on Englishness and observations on human kind capture the spirit of a country at war, whereby his first-hand harrowing accounts of the progress of war and the destruction of his beloved country are also juxtaposed with the trivia, traumas and detail of domestic life.
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