Love in the Blitz: The War Letters of Eileen Alexander to Gershon Ellenbogan

Beginning in the summer before World War II erupts, a young Cambridge graduate named Eileen Alexander writes the first of what will become hundreds of letters to fellow student Gershon Ellenbogen. What starts as witty intellectual correspondence deepens into profound love as Europe fractures around them. Gershon departs for Cairo; Eileen takes a post at the Air Ministry while bombs fall on London. His letters are lost, but hers survive, forming a one-sided yet remarkably complete portrait of a woman sustaining herself through separation, loss, and uncertainty with extraordinary candor and humor.

The three-narrator format gives the production real dimension. Sian Clifford and Stephanie Racine bring warmth and period authenticity to Eileen's voice across its shifting registers, from playful flirtation to quiet grief, while Oswyn Murray grounds the historical framing. The epistolary structure translates beautifully to audio, the spoken word restoring the intimacy these letters were always meant to carry.