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|title=The Diary of Lena Mukhina: A Girl's Life in the Siege of Leningrad

|sort=Diary of Lena Mukhina: A Girl's Life in the Siege of Leningrad, The

|publisher=Macmillan

|date=February 2015

|summary=Another very readable book that one would in any morality prefer never actually existed.

}}

If life as a girl of school-leaving age is hard enough, think about it when you're stuck in a great city under a horrendous siege. Lena Mukhina's diary only covers half the 800-odd days the nightmare in Leningrad lasted, but so palpably singular were the circumstances that it feels like one is given the clearest insight into what it was like, courtesy of these pages. I've been there and never felt the ghost of the siege in the modern St Petersburg, anything like (for example) the ruination of Warsaw had lived on. But a dreadful time this was. At the peak times of Nazi oppression and aerial bombing, the city lost 2 or 3 residents' lives ''every minute'' of the day on average. The city was desperate for fuel, and food – and this is a place where it can – and does here – snow in June. Without giving too much of the diet away, it's notable that later on Lena dreams of having a menagerie of small animals to live with – but no dogs or cats.