Author:Angus Calder
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.
Full of vivid anecdote … and of epigrammatic flair … it is a dense, detailed, moving chronicle.
—— Richard Eyre , Independent on SundayA tour de force of historical reconstruction
—— Sunday TimesThe 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 SundayNo verdict can I pronounce on The People's War other than, read it
—— Elizabeth Bowen , SpectatorHe 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 TimesThe best social history of the second world war
—— John Vincent , Sunday TelegraphScrupulous and honest, this book is utterly without illusions. Rees, a distinguished journalist and historian at the BBC, layers these details with little fanfare but great craftsmanship. Reading this book is an ordeal - not through any failure of the author's but because of his success. Rees's research is impeccable and intrepid. Rees also makes good use of the records that became available only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites. spare, heartbreaking prose.
—— Washington PostI believe that Rees's book will be included in the canon of fundamental works shaping our knowledge about the Holocaust.
—— Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, former Polish Foreign Minister and one-time inmate of AuschwitzMonty and Rommel: Parallel Lives, is an utterly absorbing and entertaining book devoted to two of the most charismatic and strategically important military leaders of the Second World War .... It is certainly a must for anyone with a modicum of interest in the military and contemporary history
—— The NetworkerA first-class work of scholarly and entertaining history
—— Andrew RobertsA wonderful mine of information for fans of either general ... [Caddick-Adams] is a military historian of great industry who shows an impressive grasp of his materials ... The author's central purpose is achieved with impressive and cumulative success as his book progresses
—— New RepublicThis biography is one of a kind … tactical talents, personalities and military careers are rivetingly compared and evaluated
—— Express
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