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.
- ISBN10 0224616536
- ISBN13 9780224616539
- Publish Date 1 January 1986 (first published 15 March 1979)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 11 August 2016
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 656
- Language English