There's No Story There

There's No Story There Synopsis

There's No Story There is about the lives of conscripted workers at Statevale, an enormous rural munitions factory somewhere in England during the Second World War. The workers make shells and bombs, and no chances can be taken with so much high explosive around. Trolleys are pushed slowly, workers wear rubber-soled soft shoes, and put protective cream on their faces. Any kind of metal, moving fast, can cause a spark, and that would be fatal. All cigarettes and matches are handed in before the workers can enter the danger zone, and they wear asbestos suits. When a journalist is asked why she hasn't written about this secret factory, she shrugs, and says 'There's no story there.' With so much death just waiting to happen, why aren't the workers' stories told? This remarkable novel about wartime life and work is a companion to Blitz Writing (2019), Handheld Press's edition of Inez Holden's novella Night Shift (1941) and her wartime diaries It Was Different At The Time (1943). This edition includes three pieces of Holden's long-form journalism, detailing wartime life. The Introduction by Lucy Scholes explores this wartime trilogy by Holden against her life as a novelist and Bright Young Thing in the 1930s, and as a wartime journalist.

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