Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #968501 in Books
• Published on: 1993-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 273 pages

Customer Reviews

Dull revisionism with a sneer. Save your money.
This is a truly awful book. Mr Ponting has addressed a real need for a revisionist approach to the facts about Britain in 1940 with, no doubt, a formidable amount of research. But he would have done us all a favour if he had had the wisdom - perhaps the humility - to recognise that his material would better have been shared with a writer capable of doing justice to it. There are illuminating chapters here and there; most particularly on the dreadful financial crisis faced by the British government and the way in which that was exploited by the Americans to establish their final post-war superiority. But they are more than outweighed by the flow of assertions serving only,apparently,to promote what appears to be Mr Ponting's personal belief that Churchill was a drunken rotter and the entire British government a set of struggling incompetents. On what evidence, for example, does he assert that the famous London underground tube shelters were'...primitive, squalid camps..? Does he expect us to be shocked that Churchill remained aware of the peace feelers being put out by Halifax and the peace movement and that initially he encountered much opposition in the Conservative party? Does anyone still believe that the evacuation of Dunkirk was anything but a military catastrophe brilliantly presented as a triumph? That Churchill and his intimates were not sometimes tempted to despair? Ironically, such moments recounted by Mr Ponting serve only to reinforce the true heroism of Winstone Churchill and his collaborators: or indeed of the ordinary people? ...'We are carrying on, because we've got to....'
That some of Churchill's most famous speeches in the House of Commons were re-recorded by actor Norman Shelley for BBC broadcast is more old history. But the characteristic tone of malicious glee with which Ponting imparts this old chestnut is somewhat let down by the quality of his research. In 'Toytown' the children's radio production of the time, Larry the Lamb was played,not by Shelley but by Derek McCullough - Uncle Mac.
Shelley, as I recall played Mr Growser, before going on later to create an immortal Winnie the Pooh. By such tiny details, books claiming to be of record stand and fall. This one falls
resoundingly.

Excellent
An excellent book from a true jack-of-all-trades historian. Superbly researched and with a sharp, witty writing style to match. A refreshing approach to a much trodden period of history. Almost as good as his other book 'Thirteen Days'.

The truth Britain has chosen to ignore
This excellent book presents some rather unpalletable facts about the reality of what happened both in the run up to 1940 and afterwards which Britain has conveniently forgotten. Ponting's analysis of the situation leads one to the same conclusions that Alan Clark drew in his excellent 'The Tories' - that Churchill's push for war was an absolute disaster for Britain and one for which we are still paying the price today.