V for Victory is about trying to live a greener, happier and healthier life with a little help from the Second World War Home Front.

Hi, I’m Hatty and I’m a self confessed geek.

It’s fine, I’m not ashamed of it. I’ve always been one of those people who just really loves to learn, whether its finding out if Octopuses can see (they use their SKIN!) , learning what you call a professional cocktail maker (a mixologist). I spend my days devouring the latest news, listening in to one of the many podcasts I follow and consuming books like they are going out of fashion. I am one of the permanently curious and can’t even imagine how many times a day I google something.

There is one subject however that makes me want to learn about it more than any other, buy every book I can find about it, visit every museum out there is for it, watch all the TV and films based on it and that’s the Second World War. From the clothes to the food, the politics to the design and the people to the machines, all of it intrigues me.

But what I love most about this era by far is the sense of purpose and resourcefulness that came out of it. Can’t get a certain food? Make a mock one. Running low on metal? Steal a few gate posts. Not enough bacon for your breakfast? Start a pig club. Nothing to feed that pig on? Here, have these left over food scraps in swill bins. Need a new night dress? Make it out of this old silk map. The list is endless. The ingenuity and advances that came out of that time were like no other era and make me want to jump right back in to experience it all.

That said I don’t want to take my whole life back in time, to be permanently wandering around in Utility clothing, throwing away my smartphone and eating Woolton Pie. My love for the modern day including pink hair dye, Pinterest and wide selection of biscuits is too strong to go full on history.

But I have always been curious to see if there was a way to mix the past in. My other research passion, when I’m not delving into the 1940’s, is ways to reduce my impact on the world and whilst I was looking into ways to live a little greener I was struck by the similarities between the problems we are facing now and the ones they were struggling with back then.

They had to reduce their dependency on imported foods, learn how to reduce their fuel consumption amoung many other problems. They were the original recyclers and became as stronger community because of the shared battles they had, all of which share a striking resemblance to the issues we are struggling with today.

So why not use some of the solutions the country came up with to deal with the problems of war time Britain to deal with the problems we are facing today? And so this blog was born.

My plan with these pages and all the pictures on my socials is to document how I get on testing out different home front tricks and tips, letting you know which ones work and which ones don’t and see if living a little more 40’s in this modern age can make me healtier, happier and greener.

To make it all the more easier for me to test out my theory, I have split up the problems I want to solve into 4 categories headed by famous Home Front campaigns. So posts about waste are split into two, one being Waste Not, Want Not that deals with my rubbish and the second is Make Do and Mend which is about consuming less. Next is Dig for Victory which is everything food, from growing to cooking and then finally Do Your Bit which very broadly covers looking after myself and my place in society.

Working with me

Fancy collaborating on a blog post, have a book you want me to reviews or product to test? Just send a message through the Contact Form with the subject “Working together” and what you are proposing, I will get back to you as soon as possible.