ONE day last year, Jamie Hodder Williams - chief executive of Hodder & Stoughton - received a brown paper parcel tied up with string.

In it was a note that read: "I am a Hodder author. I am hoping you will consider my new novel." It was from Frank White, a great-grandfather, aged 90. His last novel had been published 53 years earlier.

It was the realisation that the number of people who could write firsthand about the Second World War was fast diminishing that led Frank to write his long-awaited second novel.

He spent the summer of 2013 writing There Was A Time, about life in a village on the east coast from June to December, 1940 - one of the most potent points of the war when Britain faced the bleak prospect of invasion.

"The anxieties of the times created a mood never experienced before or since," says Frank. "Its stresses transformed states of mind. Its upheavals and heightened emotions transformed lives."

The book opens on a glorious summer morning, as the country prepares for invasion. The beaches are mined and tank traps are set up in the village. And daily life goes on for the villagers, who have quickly learned to adapt and support each other. Drinks continue to be served at the Black Bull (even if brewed illegally), the gardening club is busier than ever, the Commodore takes his morning walk, the Reverend Samuel Duke carries on with this work at the church, and the evacuees up at Pretoria House are largely shielded from the war.

Post-Dunkirk, the optimism of the early days of war has faded. Mussolini is now allied with Hitler. In Churchill's Britain, the call has gone out for men not available for the services to form a new civilian force, the Local Defence Volunteer Corps.

Down Main Street, everyone tunes into BBC broadcasts and the night watch is on the lookout for spies.

The arrival of two companies of the 1st Battalion Lancashire Rifles to set up camp in the village is met with mixed feelings. They have returned from France, where many comrades have been killed, wounded or taken prisoner. As the soldiers march through the village, some onlookers clap. Others, seeing the haunted look on the men's faces, weep.

Frank's remarkable novel depicts an intense wartime period that changed ordinary people forever. "In the blue sky above, the fate of the whole war will soon rest with the RAF and their desperate effort to win the Battle of Britain," writes Frank. "If they fail, Hitler's next step will be invasion."

He captures the anxiety, the strain on relationships, the way war gripped every family, and the sobering realisation that life as people knew it was about to end. He writes beautifully - poignantly and with humour - of domestic life, from humble cottages to country manor houses, in a rural corner of England as the war rages.

"Mrs Thurlow's eyes filled with tears. She look at the mantelpiece on which stood a photograph of her son, Jim, in army uniform, with sergeant's stripes on his sleeves, smiling. Three weeks ago, she had received a telegram from the War Office informing her that he was missing after Dunkirk"..."She sat, quite lifeless, with her hands in her lap, fingers, tortured by arthritis, twisted into claws, lisle stockings in concertina folds around her ankles."

Aged 17, Frank volunteered for the Royal Navy and served in the British Pacific Fleet during the war. He later worked in journalism and was publicity manager for Hepworth & Grandage in Bradford. He has written magazine articles, a short book on the First World War and two plays for BBC radio.

Frank dedicates his book to his wife, June, "but for whom the manuscript of this work would have remained mouldering away for ever on the shelf."

From everyone who has or will read this book: Thank you, June.

* There Was A Time is published by Hodder & Stoughton on June 29, priced 16.99