For fifty years, Mollie Panter-Downes' name was associated with The New Yorker. She wrote over thirty short stories about English domestic life during World War Two. Twenty-one of these stories are included in Good Evening, Mrs Craven - the first collected volume of her work. Mollie Panter-Downes writes about those coping on the periphery of the war who attend sewing parties, host evacuees sent to the country, and obsess over food and rationing. She captures the quiet moments of fear and courage. Here we find "the mistress, unlike the wife, who has to worry and mourn in secret for her man" and a "middle-aged spinster finds herself alone again when the camaraderie of the air-raids is over.""Don't think I'm being stupid and morbid," she said, "but supposing anything happens.... You might be wounded or ill and I wouldn't know." She tried to laugh. "The War Office doesn't have a service for sending telegrams to mistresses, does it?"
