Allweddair Rationing

This is the story of women in wartime – those left behind while the men are away fighting. It’s the story of three very different women who work in a beauty parlour attached to a luxury hotel, during the Second World War. It’s 1944 and the tide is turning against the Japanese in the Pacific, while American forces, waiting for their final push through the Pacific Islands, have made Sydney a gaudy, hectic garrison town. At the center of the action is the South Pacific Hotel, one of Sydney’s finest. It’s modeled on the Australia Hotel, demolished during the 1960s but a legend during the wartime era.

Historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn turn back the clock to run Manor Farm in Hampshire exactly as it would have been during World War II.