The People's War by Angus Calder - ISBN: 9780712652841
Paperback
The Second World War was, for Britain, a ‘total war’. In this title, the author 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, factor…

The People's War

Britain 1939-1945

$56.75

  • Paperback

    672 pages

  • Release Date

    15 July 1992

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Summary

A magisterial and award-winning history that was the first substantial work to question conventional wisdom on wartime Britain.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 partic…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780712652841
ISBN-10:0712652841
Author:Angus Calder
Publisher:Vintage
Imprint:Pimlico
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:672
Release Date:15 July 1992
Weight:801g
Dimensions:234mm x 153mm x 48mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

Full of vivid anecdote … and of epigrammatic flair … it is a dense, detailed, moving chronicle.

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 *

About The Author

Angus Calder

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.

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