Knickers Back To Front offers a war-time Worthing memoir

She spent four months in Ollerton, Notts with her big sister. Leila admits it’s weird but she remembers nothing about being told she was going to have to be evacuated: “I don't even remember saying goodbye or being seen off at the train, presumably at Worthing, because we then had to go to, I don't know if it was Kings Cross or Euston. My first memory is being on the steam train going to Newark. We spent the first night in Newark and were then evacuated to Ollerton.”

Leila and her sister Sybil stayed with Mr and Mrs Farrow.

“They were very kind. Mr Farrow was a miner, and they had two teenage sons, 14 and 17. They were a lovely family.”

They looked after her well: “But the problem was that they were expecting two little girls of Sibyl's age, because she was 11. And I went with Worthing High School for Girls, because they were allowed to take siblings.”

Instead of two 11-year-olds, however, they got Sybil plus six-year-old Leila, and she was, she admits, a “bit of a handful.”

“In my book are lots of the letters that Sibyl and I wrote home. And so it's proof, you know, I wrote it. There it is. But I can't remember a lot of it.”

As for the title of the book: “Whenever people ask me, why is it called that? I say, well, you have to read it. You'll get the answer. But I start the book off with a narrative. The war started when I was five. So it's a lot about that.”

The book is written in the style of children: “But it's the kind of book that needs to be read with a grown up or grandparent or an older sibling because it needs to be read aloud. And some of the letters are funny, especially Mrs Farrow, the foster mother, complaining in letters to my mother about me when I was what she called naughty.”

Back to the title though: “If you ask anybody what they remember of the day war broke out, a lot of people will say they remember sitting around the wireless, as it was called in those days, which was a big piece of furniture. And I do remember that when I was about three, I used to go looking for the voice booming at me. I used to go around the back to look for the man inside.

“So I remember the wireless, and a lot of people say their memory was everybody sitting solemnly around the wireless and hearing the grave announcement from the prime minister saying Britain is now at war. I don't remember any of that.

“My memory was we lived in a three-roomed house in Worthing, and I remember kneeling up on the sofa and looking out of the window because my parents had moved from the East End in London and come to Worthing just after I was born.

“So when the war broke out, all their relatives and the relatives' friends that we didn't know, they all panicked and they all started rushing down to Worthing. And I can remember the excitement of kneeling up on the sofa. A few would come, maybe by car, then a lull, then maybe some on a train, another lull. So it kept on like that.

“And our little living room I just remember being full of people. And I'm kneeling up looking out of the window because I thought it was all very exciting. And somebody said: ‘Oh, look at Leila. She's got her knickers on back to front.’”

The book is available from Amazon.