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The Time of Their Lives

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Factual: History

10/04/2013

BBC Radio Scotland - The Time of Their Lives

Sally Magnusson meets the Glasgow schoolgirls evacuated to Perthshire over 70 years ago.

Sally Magnusson tells the unusual story of the Glasgow schoolgirls evacuated in 1939 to two mansions in Perthshire for the duration of the war.

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Sally Magnusson tells the story of an unusual wartime evacuation. In 1939 Laurel Bank School for Girls in Glasgow moved to Perthshire and spent the war in two large country houses - Strathallan Castle and Auchterarder House - where the vast drawing rooms dripping with fine art were turned into makeshift classrooms, and palatial bedrooms were reduced to cramped dormitories, filled with camp beds. The girls learnt Latin in the billiard room, went tattie howking for the war effort, and made bandages for wounded soldiers at Gleneagles Hospital up the road. This is the story of what life was like for these girls, now in their 70s and 80s, and how they remember a time in their lives which shaped them. It's a unique story and a little-known chapter in the history of Scotland's wartime evacuation.

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