PLACES OF GREATER SAFETY by Hilda...

PLACES OF GREATER SAFETY by Hilda Hollingsworth (Zenobia Press/RDR Books: $12.95; 286 pp., paperback original). When the Blitz began destroying London, thousands of British school children were moved to “places of greater safety” in the countryside. Hilda Hollingsworth and her sisters were sent to an ugly Welsh mining town, where they became the reluctant guests of a succession of families. A few of their hosts were kind, but the majority were self-righteously pious and, often, emotionally and physically abusive. Hollingsworth’s wrenching descriptions of her struggle to survive this lonely, unnatural childhood serve as a reminder of one of the forgotten sorrows of WW II.