The People's War
Britain 1939-1945
1st Edition
Published on 31. July 2012
672 pages
978-1-4481-0310-2 (ISBN)
Description
The Second World War was, for Britain, a 'total war'; no section of society remained untouched by military conscription, air raids, the shipping crisis and the war economy.
In this comprehensive and engrossing narrative Angus Calder presents not only the great events and leading figures but also the oddities and banalities of daily life on the Home Front, and in particular the parts played by ordinary people: air raid wardens and Home Guards, factory workers and farmers, housewives and pacifists. Above all this revisionist and important work reveals how, in those six years, the British people came closer to discarding their social conventions than at any time since Cromwell's republic.
Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys prize in 1970, The People's War draws on oral testimony and a mass of neglected social documentation to question the popularised image of national unity in the fight for victory.
In this comprehensive and engrossing narrative Angus Calder presents not only the great events and leading figures but also the oddities and banalities of daily life on the Home Front, and in particular the parts played by ordinary people: air raid wardens and Home Guards, factory workers and farmers, housewives and pacifists. Above all this revisionist and important work reveals how, in those six years, the British people came closer to discarding their social conventions than at any time since Cromwell's republic.
Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys prize in 1970, The People's War draws on oral testimony and a mass of neglected social documentation to question the popularised image of national unity in the fight for victory.
Reviews / Votes
Full of vivid anecdote ... and of epigrammatic flair ... it is a dense, detailed, moving chronicle. -- Richard Eyre * Independent on Sunday * A tour de force of historical reconstruction * Sunday Times * The People's War is more than a salutary iconoclastic analysis of its period and more than an immensely fastidious social history. It is full of vivid anecdote...and of epigrammatic flair... I've read Angus Calder's book several times and passed it on to friends. I've commissioned and directed several plays and films which have been inspired by it. It is a dense, detailed, moving chronicle that I am still unable to read without feeling both nostalgia and pain for the unfulfilled promise of the world I was born into -- Richard Eyre * Independent on Sunday * No verdict can I pronounce on The People's War other than, read it -- Elizabeth Bowen * Spectator * He has provided an engrossing, beautifully organized book that could provide a valuable education for the post-war generation and a salutary re-education for his elders -- Phillip French * Financial Times * The best social history of the second world war -- John Vincent * Sunday Telegraph *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Illustrations
1
File size
3,22 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-4481-0310-2 (9781448103102)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Angus Calder was an academic, writer, historian, educator and literary editor, and Reader in Cultural Studies and Staff Tutor in Arts with the Open University in Scotland. He read English at Cambridge and received his D. Phil from the School of Social Studies at the University of Sussex. He was Convener of the Scottish Poetry Library when it was founded in 1984. In 1970 he won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize for his seminal work, The People's War. His other books include Revolutionary Empire and The Myth of the Blitz. He died in 2008.
