The young unmarried daughters of the upper classes who were debutantes before 1939 were the most cocooned members of British society. These girls, economically supported, socially insulated and morally patrolled, found the advent of war - to which most of them responded without hesitation by joining up - both a challenge and an education.

Anne de Courcy has interviewed forty-seven women who were pre-war debs. Several became nurses or VADs, where they were often given the worst jobs. Others opted for factory work, trying (usually unsuccessfully) to disguise their background. One or two worked at Bletchley Park or became Land Girls. But most went into the Services - as FANYs, ATS, Wrens or WAAFs. Their individual stories reveal the extraordinary diversity of the work they undertook.

These women recall the joys and sorrows, the problems and perversities of wartime. They talk about the changes that war brought to their lives, of the difficulties of love and marriage, and what they did for fun. They describe the culture shock of going from a world where a lady's maid looked after their clothes to one where being inspected for head lice was routine; and how the class barrier dissolved under the imperatives of love and war - or retained its ancient power. Horrors and tragedies became a commonplace, but for all of them the feelings of liberation and self-confidence produced by wartime challenges changed their lives.