Product Description

The 1939-45 conflict was, for Britain, a "total war"; no section of society remained untouched by military conscription, air raids, the shipping crisis and the war economy. This book not only states the great events and the leading figures, but also the oddities and the banalities of daily life, and in particular the parts played by ordinary people: air raid wardens and Home Guards, factory workers and farmers, housewives and pacifists. Above all, the book reveals how, in those six years, the British people came closer to discarding their social conventions than at any time since Cromwell's republic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62634 in Books
• Published on: 1992-06-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

Customer Reviews

A People's War is a People's Book
This book was found to contain a vast amount of relevant information concerning the implications of the Second World War upon a society which was undergoing a huge upheaval in its approach to cultural, social and even feminist issues. It was at times vague and descriptive, yet beyond this it produces a very solid foundation in which to tackle this period of history. It is personally felt as a full-time student that this book would benefit anyone studying at AS level through to degree level and possibly higher. GO Out and Buy IT!!!

Street-level history
Most history is written using the documents of the rich and powerful as the source. The result is a dearth of information about the ordinary people of the day. This fine work sets out to be, and succeeds in being,a wonderful excepion to the rule. The smell of the chimney smoke and damp walls of Britain before, during and immediately after the war seeps from its pages. Excellent.

What people didn't realize at the time
My parents were children at the time. This excellent book gives lie to all the documentary propaganda we have seen since 1945. A really left-wing pre- revolutionary Britain?