Queuing to buy fish

You will no doubt have heard about food rationing during the 1939–45 war. But did you know that the longest and most persistent food queues were often for fish, which was not actually rationed?

Material gathered for an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum reveals that when a German V1 rocket’s engine cut out over Paddington in 1944, the queue at the fishmonger was the only one in which no one ducked.

The exhibition, which examines how the British people adapted to food shortages during the war, runs until the end of 2010. It tells the story of the wartime Ministry of Food, which was established in 1939 shortly after the outbreak of the war.

Using a network of 1,000 local food offices, the ministry’s main role was to organise the rationing scheme, which began in 1940. Later in the war the ministry arranged the supply of supplements such as orange juice and cod liver oil. It also had a strong educational role in that it advised people what to eat and how to cook.

Among the exhibits is a recreated wartime kitchen, a 1940s grocer’s shop and a greenhouse, with explanations of the importance of growing your own, eating seasonal fruit and vegetables, recycling and avoiding waste.

Some 70 years later, we are getting to grips with these messages once again, but this time round, it may be for longer than the 15 or so years of wartime rationing.