Books were important both to civilians and to people in the armed services. The public at home were hungry for knowledge about the regions of the world where their men were serving, in the Middle East and North Africa and then in New Guinea and the islands.

Books like Chester Wilmot's Rats of Tobruk gave them some insight into the long ordeal of men trapped in that desert garrison, which letters home could not provide because of strict censorship. Maps, too, were in great demand.

Through them families could trace the progress of the war in places both familiar from school lessons - including Thermopylae and Mt Olympus in Greece - and places like El Alamein and Kokoda, that were new to Australians but that would become part of its folklore and history before too long.

Rationing and the larger impacts of war were being felt in the book trade, as the war dragged on. In Australia the trade generally was badly affected by increasing labour and paper shortages.

In 1942 the printing industry made an appeal for the right to appoint female labour especially given the shortage of book binders.

Throughout 1943 and '44 there were monthly notices in The Canberra Times advising that ''good prices would be given at Verity Hewitt's bookshop for second-hand fiction (cloth or paper binding) in good condition''.

New books from Britain continued to arrive but at irregular times and in much smaller numbers. Those that were especially sought after were the Penguin paperbacks in their distinctive coloured jackets - still only the price of a packet of cigarettes - and the well-loved Everyman library of books with their beautiful end papers and Arts and Crafts design, all printed with the reassuring motto, Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide. In thy most need go by thy side.

Publication of Australian books was increasing as firms like Angus & Robertson in Sydney and Robertson & Mullins in Melbourne took up the opportunities presented by the decline in the British trade, for the public's hunger for books had not lessened.

Angus & Robertson published scores of books by Australian authors and Australian editions of books that had been written overseas.

Books were important in the Australian armed services as well. The main voluntary bodies - the Australian Red Cross, Australian Comforts Fund and the YMCA - all sent books, magazines and periodicals to the forces. In 1940 the Victorian Division of the Red Cross sent 6521 new Penguins and similar books to be included in Christmas boxes for men serving at home and abroad.

A senior medical officer in New Guinea thanked the Red Cross for sending boxes of comforts to his hospital: ''In particular the reading matter was welcomed for it creates a feeling of mental wellbeing in the patients by allowing them to forget for a while the dreadful conditions and experiences they are enduring, and is - in my opinion - an important step towards their eventual recovery.''

The YMCA kept a recreation centre open at Tobruk which earned the reputation of being ''the most bombed and shelled YMCA section in the world'', maintaining a canteen, games, classes and religious services throughout the siege.

In 1941 the Army Education Service [AES] was established to provide lectures, films, music recitals and correspondence courses for millions of soldiers. In 1943 they purchased 17,000 ''Forces Book Club'' Penguins for distribution to troops in New Guinea and the islands. Thousands more Penguins were distributed to troops in the Pacific in March 1944 through the Army Amenity Fund.

That same year the Commonwealth Literary Fund supported a move by the AES to create the Australian Pocket Library, which were reprints of a range of out-of-print Australian books. These proved very popular, with print runs of 25,000 selling out quickly. Books by Vance Palmer, Kylie Tennant and Frank Clune were among those selected.

Classics like The Man from Snowy River, C.E.W. Bean's On the Wool Track and Henry Lawson's short stories were reprinted in this series. Insect Wonders of Australia by Keith McKeown was a popular natural history book published by Angus & Robertson in hard cover in 1935. It reappeared in paperback form in the Pocket Library series. Many of these modest little productions made welcome gifts for servicemen from their families, for men and women away on active service yearned for the familiar, and missed deeply the sights and sounds of the Australian bush.

Another popular book at the time was Days of our Years, printed initially in America. It was a story of pre-war Europe by Pierre Van Paasen, a foreign correspondent working in Palestine between the wars. A prisoner of war in Java, Ray Denning was at one of the few Japanese camps that allowed men to have reading material. While there he read Van Paasen's book and also H.G.Wells's Outline of History. His camp library was ''a stimulating oasis for the mind even though our bodies shrank and showed signs of malnutrition''.

Books provided support and company for many prisoners of war in Europe. The Red Cross recommended books in the Everyman's Library for families to send to these camps because they were cheap and sturdy and provided good solid reading. Robert Kee, a British POW in Germany, stated that ''we could not have lived without books. They were the only true support, the one true comfort''.