Attack Warning Red!

Dec 4, 2024 2:28 PM

Author:Julie McDowall

Attack Warning Red!

*A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK*

The first book to tell the story of day-to-day life on the nuclear home front - from the host of #1 podcast Atomic Hobo

'So entertaining' The Times

'Cracking' Sunday Telegraph

The atomic bombs of 1945 changed war forever. The awesome power of the blast and its deadly fallout meant home in Britain fell under the nuclear shadow, and the threat of annihilation coloured every aspect of ordinary life for the next forty years.

Families were encouraged to construct makeshift shelters with cardboard and sandbags. Vicars and pub landlords learnt how to sound hand-wound sirens, offering four minutes to scramble to safety. Thousands volunteered to give nuclear first aid, often consisting of breakfast tea, herbal remedies, and advice on how to die without contaminating others. And while the public had to look after themselves, bunkers were readied for the officials and experts who would ensure life continued after the catastrophe.

Today we may read about the Cold War and life in Britain under the shadow of the mushroom cloud with a sense of amusement and relief that the apocalypse did not happen. But it is also a timely and powerful reminder that, so long as nuclear weapons exist, the nuclear threat will always be with us.

'Impossible to believe, just as hard to put down' Dan Snow

'Simultaneously horrifying, weirdly nostalgic and darkly hilarIous' Mark Haddon, author of The Porpoise

Reviews

Cracking

—— Sunday Telegraph

So entertaining

—— The Times

Very good ... A sobering book, but a gripping one

—— Spectator

Julie McDowall's thoroughly gripping study ... makes for genuinely startling and sometimes darkly funny reading... [it's] brilliantly chilling and sparkily engaging

—— Mail on Sunday

Attack Warning Red! is a timely reminder of the mind-blanking horror of nuclear warfare, as it menaces Europe once more

—— Sunday Times

Simultaneously horrifying, weirdly nostalgic and darkly hilarious

—— Mark Haddon, author of The Porpoise

Impossible to believe, just as hard to put down. Urgent. Terrifying

—— Dan Snow, historian and host of History Hit

Superb ... a lucid, totally compulsive read from beginning to end, chilling as well as profoundly empathetic in tone

—— Mick Jackson, director of Threads

Brilliant and unforgettable ... A beautifully writtern horror story and amazing work of research ... Julie McDowall has made the unreadable compulsive and the unthinkable thinkable, but above all this is a book that cherishes humanity in all its absurdity, intelligence, vulnerability, courage and, against all odds, belief in hope and survival

—— Juliet Nicolson, author of Frostquake

Captivating, chilling, and at times darkly humorous. A fascinating insight into Britain's preparations for surviving Armageddon, and the ghastly reality of what the aftermath of a nuclear war would actually be like

—— Lewis Dartnell, author of The Knowledge

Fascinating

—— Sir Lawrence Freedman, author of Command

How to prepare for Armageddon? Julie McDowell has written the best exploration yet of how successive British administrations grappled with the challenge of living under the shadow of nuclear war, with depth, compassion and very necessary dark humour

—— Prof. Mark Galeotti, author of The Weaponisation of Everything

This by turns harrowing and farcical book charts the reality of living under constant threat of nuclear oblivion

—— iPaper

Timely ... harrowing ... farcical ... the most surprising aspect of Attack Warning Red!, however, is that, alongside generous helpings of fear and unease, it carries a strong charge of nostalgia

—— Scotland on Sunday

Attack Warning Red! effectively pulls together many strands from this unsettling aspect of British history and weaves them in a way that will alarm and entertain

—— BBC History Magazine

A fascinating read

—— Radio Times

An atomic Dad's Army, McDowall's history of the UK's nuclear civil defence is full of hilarious gems

—— Daily Telegraph

McDowall's book has the tone of a podcast [...] She leads her audience round bunkers, propaganda films and government records, pointing out the horrifying, the unexpected and the absurd

—— London Review of Books

Most interesting

—— Times Literary Supplement

An unsettling festive read

—— Soldier

A superb achievement ... a lucid, totally compulsive read from beginning to end, chilling as well as profoundly empathetic in tone

—— Mick Jackson, director of Threads

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