Wartime: Britain 1939-1945. Juliet Gardiner

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0755310284 ISBN 13: 9780755310289

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing, 2005

Juliet Gardiner's critically acclaimed book - the first in a generation to tell the people's story of the Second World War - offers a compelling and comprehensive account of the pervasiveness of war on the Home Front. The book has been commended for its inclusion of many under-described aspects of the Home Front, and alongside familiar stories of food shortages, evacuation and the arrival of the GIs, are stories of Conscientious Objectors, persecuted Italians living in Britain and Lumber Jills working in the New Forest. Drawing on a multitude of sources, many previously unpublished, she tells the story of those six gruelling years in voices from the Orkney Islands to Cornwall, from the Houses of Parliament to the Nottinghamshire mines.

About the Author:

Juliet Gardiner is a historian with wide academic and commercial credentials. She spent five years as editor of History Today magazine, and has been Academic Director at Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Head of Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University. She has contributed widely to the UK's national press and her television experience includes being a member of the on-screen member of the 'war cabinet' for The 1940s House, for which she was also the historical consultant. She is the author of ten books.

Review:

Plenty of nostalgia and war-time spirit in this comprehensive account of life on the Home Front * The Veteran * Gardiner explores every aspect of the British home front, and presents these deeply moving moments superbly. I have no doubt that 'Wartime' will become the seminal work on Britain at war. * Daily Mail (Max Arthur) * utterly gripping * The Spectator * after the torrents of film and forests of print devoted to her subject over the last four decades, it is exhilarating that Gardiner finds so many under-described aspects of the Home Front to document through her fresh witnesses. * BBC History Magazine * Juliet Gardiner's book is ...wonderfully readable * BBC History Magazine * In a book replete with treasures, everyone will find a special jewel. * The Times Literary Supplement (David Stafford) * humorous and deeply moving * Despatches * Danger, courage, deprivation, exhaustion, fear, humour and that old enemy 'boredom' were endured for six years. This exhilarating book is the voice of these people. * Despatches * Irresistably unputdownable * Scotland On Sunday (Angus Calder) * From lost loves to crabby children to the sorrow of receiving the worst possible news, this is a remarkably personal picture of wartime life at home. * The Good Book Guide * Juliet Gardiner's 'Wartime' provides a marvellously rich, and often entertaining, recreation of life on the Home Front, 1939-45, drawing on an enormous range of oral testimony and memoir. * The Scotsman *