One of those things that are worth writing home about

LAST LETTERS HOME. ed Tamasin Day-Lewis Macmillan, #17.50

LETTERS become literature when they are preserved in print for

whatever reason. One reason is to add to our understanding of public

figures who, aware of their own importance, posted their letters to

posterity. Another reason is the pleasurable invasion of privacy for we

enjoy intercepting guided missives, hence the appeal of Joy Street and

Last Letters Home.

One month before Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Mirren

Barford met Jock Lewes at a wedding in Oxford. Born in India in 1920,

she was then a student at Somerville College. Born in India in 1913 and

educated at Christ Church College, he was then a member of the British

Council. Given peace in their time, Mirren had to wait while Jock helped

create a commando unit that became the SAS (Special Air Service).

Jock joined the Welsh Guards and wrote to Mirren from his training

camp in 1940: ''Persuade everyone you meet that we will and can fight

not to the end but until we win.'' He was convinced that ''to give one's

life and one's happiness in a cause like this is to win for oneself in a

future life which certainly awaits us all -- even Hitler -- such ecstasy

as we in our wildest dreams wot not of.'' Jock was killed by a cannon

shell from a German fighter in December 1941 while returning from an

operation against Nofilia aerodrome, Libya.

Mirren married Richard Wise in 1943. After her death in 1992, her son

Michael discovered her collection of letters in her desk. He decided to

publish because Mirren responded so enthusiastically to one of Jock's

letters in 1940: ''It was a fine letter; one day I hope my

great-grandchildren will take the trouble to have them published for

many people would read them gladly if they had the chance.'' Now they

have the chance they should take it.

Wise by name as well as nature, the editor has allowed Mirren and Jock

to speak for themselves by keeping his distance from their dialogue. He

provides a few factual annotations and briefly speculates on what the

mysterious Joy Street meant to his mother and Jock. Transcribing the

letters, Wise came to the conclusion that Joy Street ''described Mirren

and Jock's individual meeting''. Judging from the passionate tone of the

correspondence, Joy Street was more about mating than meeting.

''We have a chance to rank with the world's greatest lovers,'' wrote

Jock to Mirren in August 1940 after their seventh meeting which gave him

a glorious memory of ''No 7 Joy Street''. Thinking of No 8 Joy Street

(the eighth meeting), Jock asked: ''Do I or do I not wish to attempt the

seduction of Mirren?'' And he answered in his own lyrical way: ''It was

with perfect confidence that I approached No 8 Joy Street . . . We

stepped out of our clothes and slid together into the lake . . . We

ourselves were outlined in every detail of our proud bodies by a million

tiny points of steadfast light, not spattered or haphazard, but, like a

mezzotint, picking out the form of nature's beauty.''

Pressurised by the business of war, Jock enjoyed the pleasure of

writing erotic prose. The tough commando, who earned a reputation as the

most fearsome fighter in Tobruk, kept going by going on about Mirren:

''Oh God, how I desire you! How I crave and groan in spirit for that

sensual touch . . . How my lips burn for yours and the heat of your

tongue in my mouth and the smooth taste of your spittle and the warmth

of your breath in my nostrils!'' Jock wrote poems as well as prose for

Mirren but never managed to rise to the occasion in verse.

As Mirren noted in October 1941, it was an extraordinary affair. She

had met Jock only 10 times yet knew ''Joy Street was made to be lived in

and not merely the figment of dreams''. She knew Jock as a lover yet did

not want to blackmail him into marriage: ''I believe I'd marry you

tomorrow (but) remember too that I'm not asking you to belong to me; you

are as free now as you ever were.'' She was content at that time to wait

for him to come back to Joy Street, but, of course, he never did.

And he never could tell Mirren exactly what he was doing in the war.

An aside in a letter of September 1941 -- ''I have thrown in my lot with

David Stirling in a new venture'' -- can now be read as reference to the

formation of the SAS as Stirling is synonymous with the SAS though he

insisted: ''Jock could far more genuinely claim to be the founder of the

SAS than I.'' Jock's letters express his love for Mirren and, for all

his fighting spirit, he comes across as a lovesick solder longing for

the war to end. Mirren was obviously an inspirational figure. Many will

be moved by the way they come together in Joy Street, an intimate

account of an amorous adventure.

Joy Street concentrates on one couple. Last Letters Home show how

common it was for combatants to feel that fighting to win a war meant

losing out on love. Eric Rawlings, killed in action with the RAF, left a

letter to his loved ones: ''Love is such a very difficult thing to

express here and now on paper . . .'' Kenneth Stevens, captured by the

Japanese, wanted to comfort his wife as he drifted towards death: ''Oh

Pen, I love you so -- all I want in the world is to see you happy.''

Curly Oddy wrote to Irene Grundy three days before he died: ''I want us

to be married officially so that our combined love, as you put it, can

get together and we can have what you want.'' Wishful thinking in

wartime.

The pity of war is made poignantly clear in Tamasin Day-Lewis's

sensitive selection of letters written by folk emotionally wasted by the

daily experience of dwelling on death. Read both books under review and

you will realise what was lost in winning a war.