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Author: Joshua Levine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471131033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
The Blitz of 1940-41 is one of the most iconic periods in modern British history - and one of the most misunderstood. The 'Blitz Spirit' is often celebrated, whereas others dismiss it as a myth. Joshua Levine's thrilling biography rejects the tired arguments and reveals the human truth: the Blitz was a time of extremes of experience and behaviour. People werepulling together and helping strangers, but they were also breaking rules and exploiting each other. Life during wartime, the author reveals, was complex and messy and real. From the first page readers will discover a different story to the one they thought they knew - from the sacrifices made by ordinary people to a sudden surge in the popularity of nightclubs; from secret criminal trials at the Old Bailey to a Columbine-style murder in an Oxford College. There were new working opportunities for women and clandestine homosexual relationships conducted in the shadows. The Blitz also allowed for a melting pot of cultures: whilst prayers were offered up in a south London mosque, Jamaican sailors crossed the country. Unlikely friendships were fostered and surprising sexualities explored - these years saw a boom in prostitution and even the emergence of a popular weekly magazine for fetishists. On the darker side, racketeers and spivs made money out of the chaos, and looters prowled the night to prey on bomb victims. From the lack of cheese to the increased suicide rate, this astonishing and entertaining book takes the true pulse of a 'blitzed nation'. And it shows how social change during this time led to political change - which in turn has built the Britain we know today.
Author: Joshua Levine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471131033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Blitz of 1940-41 is one of the most iconic periods in modern British history - and one of the most misunderstood. The 'Blitz Spirit' is often celebrated, whereas others dismiss it as a myth. Joshua Levine's thrilling biography rejects the tired arguments and reveals the human truth: the Blitz was a time of extremes of experience and behaviour. People werepulling together and helping strangers, but they were also breaking rules and exploiting each other. Life during wartime, the author reveals, was complex and messy and real. From the first page readers will discover a different story to the one they thought they knew - from the sacrifices made by ordinary people to a sudden surge in the popularity of nightclubs; from secret criminal trials at the Old Bailey to a Columbine-style murder in an Oxford College. There were new working opportunities for women and clandestine homosexual relationships conducted in the shadows. The Blitz also allowed for a melting pot of cultures: whilst prayers were offered up in a south London mosque, Jamaican sailors crossed the country. Unlikely friendships were fostered and surprising sexualities explored - these years saw a boom in prostitution and even the emergence of a popular weekly magazine for fetishists. On the darker side, racketeers and spivs made money out of the chaos, and looters prowled the night to prey on bomb victims. From the lack of cheese to the increased suicide rate, this astonishing and entertaining book takes the true pulse of a 'blitzed nation'. And it shows how social change during this time led to political change - which in turn has built the Britain we know today.
Author: Juliet Gardiner
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780007386611
Category : London (England)
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
September 1940 marked the beginning of Nazi Germany's sustained attack on civilian Britain. Lasting eight months long, the Blitz was the form of warfare that had been predicted throughout the 1930s, that everyone had expected since Neville Chamberlain's declaration that Britain was at war with Germany. The ferocity of the Luftwaffe attacks, combined with images of the City of London burning are widely considered to be iconic snapshots of Second World War history. Though compared with other great moments of that war -- D-Day, Dunkirk, V E Day -- the Blitz remains curiously unexamined. Apart from fragmentary accounts and local records, there is little in the way of a comprehensive account of the Blitz experience that so many British civilians went through -- as well as the social, political and cultural implications of the bombardment. Designed to break the morale of the British population, the nightly bombings certainly did devastate. But, as Juliet Gardiner shows in this hugely important book, they also served to galvanise the nation; from those eight months of terrifying Nazi onslaught, a new determination amongst people and politicians steadily emerged. Revealing, original and beautifully written, THE BLITZ is a much-needed exploration of one of the most important moments in Second World War history.
Author: Paul Addison
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198848501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545
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Book Description
Edited and introduced by two leading historians of the period, this volume tells the inside story of Home Intelligence and why it proved so controversial in Whitehall, the complete and unabridged sequence of reports provide us with a unique and extraordinary window into the mindset of the British during a momentous period in their history.
Author: Angus Calder
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448104041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
The Myth of the Blitz was nurtured at every level of society. It rested upon the assumed invincibility of an island race distinguished by good humour, understatement and the ability to pluck victory from the jaws of defeat by team work, improvisation and muddling through. In fact, in many ways, the Blitz was not like that. Sixty-thousand people were conscientious objectors; a quarter of London's population fled to the country; Churchill and the royal family were booed while touring the aftermath of air-raids; Britain was not bombed into classless democracy. Angus Calder provides a compelling examination of the events of 1940 and 1941 - when Britain 'stood alone' against the Luftwaffe - and of the Myth which sustained her 'finest hour'.
Author: Winston G. Ramsey
Publisher: After the Battle
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 664
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Book Description
The day-to-day, blow-by-blow account of the Night Blitz. Beginning with the first mass raid on London on September 7th, 1940, the story is continued through the winter of 1940-41 with the description of Luftwaffe operations over Britain. The author's account of each night's operations brings into focus the details of the escalating attacks as one raid exceeded another in size, damage or deaths. Every German crash on land is listed with its crew, and footnotes are included on all those which are known to have been investigated or excavated since the end of the war, together with photographs of discoveries. Over twenty features and special articles by historians and eyewitnesses intersperce the daily happenings, illustrating life at the time on both the civilian and Service fronts, and contrasting descriptions by German airmen give the reader an insight into what it was like to be on the other side. The book presents a record of a period which changed the face of Britain and cost the lives of 40,000 on her people.
Author: Erik Larson
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 038534872X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609
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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
Author: Glen Blackwell
Publisher: Zoetrope Books
ISBN: 9781838325220
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Emmie let out a huge sob - "It's not a film set", she cried. She held onto Jack for a moment, then took a step back, closed her eyes and shouted - "WHERE AM I?" When Jack and Emmie suddenly find themselves transported back to London in 1940, they find a world both familiar, yet very different. As they dodge falling bombs and over-zealous policemen, they befriend Jan - a lonely Polish refugee. Together, they must work out if the shadowy figure they keep seeing is a spy and unlock the secret of getting home again...
Author: John Banville
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250133025
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
"When you're done binge-watching The Crown, pick up this multifaceted wartime thriller." —Kirkus Reviews As London endures nightly German bombings, Britain’s secret service whisks the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret from England, seeking safety for the young royals on an old estate in Ireland. Ahead of the German Blitz during World War II, English parents from every social class sent their children to the countryside for safety, displacing more than three million young offspring. In The Secret Guests, the British royal family takes this evacuation a step further, secretly moving the princesses to the estate of the Duke of Edenmore in “neutral” Ireland. A female English secret agent, Miss Celia Nashe, and a young Irish detective, Garda Strafford, are assigned to watch over “Ellen” and “Mary” at Clonmillis Hall. But the Irish stable hand, the housemaid, the formidable housekeeper, the Duke himself, and other Irish townspeople, some of whom lost family to English gunshots during the War of Independence, go freely about their business in and around the great house. Soon suspicions about the guests’ true identities percolate, a dangerous boredom sets in for the princesses, and, within and without Clonmillis acreage, passions as well as stakes rise. Benjamin Black, who has good information that the princesses were indeed in Ireland for a time during the Blitz, draws readers into a novel as fascinating as the nascent career of Miss Nashe, as tender as the homesickness of the sisters, as intriguing as Irish-English relations during WWII, and as suspenseful and ultimately action-packed as war itself.
Author: Sean Longden
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
ISBN: 9781780335520
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
From the dangers of London streets during the Blitz to working on the high seas during the Atlantic Convoy, children were on the frontline of battle during the Second World War. In Sean Longden's retelling of the conflict, he explores how the war impacted upon a whole generation who lost their innocence at home and abroad.
Author: Helen Fry
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300231229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
The first complete account of the fiercely guarded secrets of London’s clandestine interrogation center, operated by the British Secret Service from 1940 to 1948 Behind the locked doors of three mansions in London’s exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens neighborhood, the British Secret Service established a highly secret prison in 1940: the London Cage. Here recalcitrant German prisoners of war were subjected to “special intelligence treatment.” The stakes were high: the war’s outcome could hinge on obtaining information German prisoners were determined to withhold. After the war, high-ranking Nazi war criminals were housed in the Cage, revamped as an important center for investigating German war crimes. This riveting book reveals the full details of operations at the London Cage and subsequent efforts to hide them. Helen Fry’s extraordinary original research uncovers the grim picture of prisoners’ daily lives and of systemic Soviet-style mistreatment. The author also provides sensational evidence to counter official denials concerning the use of “truth drugs” and “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Bringing dark secrets to light, this groundbreaking book at last provides an objective and complete history of the London Cage.
