An immense and impressive assembly... Must surely remain an invaluable essay in the remembrance of things past

Superbly detailed and illustrated... From stirrup pumps to Spam, Norman Longmate's marvellously comprehensive panorama misses nothing. Excellent

A landmine of information covering every field of civilian life in wartime from the grandeurs of the blitz to the miseries of dried eggs and the six-inch bath

Much of it is extremely interesting; some of it is fascinatingly out-of-the-way; and all of it contributes to building up a true picture of everyday life in England from September 1939 to August 1945

Mr Longmate has recruited an enormous volunteer army of home-front veterans who sent him their wartime recollections... He has brilliantly sifted and assembled the precious debris

Highly original and penetrating ... No one who has digested this enthralling work will ever be able to look at the period again in quite the same way

Keegan's power as a writer derives from the fact that he does not see himself merely as a chronicler of battles, but as a student of the human condition. It is the breadth of his grasp of civilisation, as well as of the soldier's art, that makes this book so formidable.