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Author: Daniel Travers Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1350006955 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
What is often held to be Britain's 'finest hour' – the Second World War – was not experienced so uniformly across the British Isles. On the margins, the war was endured in profoundly different ways. While D-Day or Dunkirk is embedded in British collective memory, how many Britons can recall that Finns were interned on the Isle of Man, that enemy soldiers developed British infrastructure in Orkney, or that British subjects were sent to concentration camps from Guernsey? Such experiences, tangential to the dominant British war narrative, are commemorated elsewhere in the 'other British Isles'. In this remarkable contribution to British Island Studies, Daniel Travers pursues these histories and their commemoration across numerous local sites of memory: museums, heritage sites and public spaces. He examines the way these island identities assert their own distinctiveness over the British wartime story, and ultimately the way they fit into the ongoing discourse about how the memory of the Second World War has been constructed since 1945.
Author: Daniel Travers Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1350006955 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
What is often held to be Britain's 'finest hour' – the Second World War – was not experienced so uniformly across the British Isles. On the margins, the war was endured in profoundly different ways. While D-Day or Dunkirk is embedded in British collective memory, how many Britons can recall that Finns were interned on the Isle of Man, that enemy soldiers developed British infrastructure in Orkney, or that British subjects were sent to concentration camps from Guernsey? Such experiences, tangential to the dominant British war narrative, are commemorated elsewhere in the 'other British Isles'. In this remarkable contribution to British Island Studies, Daniel Travers pursues these histories and their commemoration across numerous local sites of memory: museums, heritage sites and public spaces. He examines the way these island identities assert their own distinctiveness over the British wartime story, and ultimately the way they fit into the ongoing discourse about how the memory of the Second World War has been constructed since 1945.
Author: Daniel Travers Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1350006963 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
What is often held to be Britain's 'finest hour' – the Second World War – was not experienced so uniformly across the British Isles. On the margins, the war was endured in profoundly different ways. While D-Day or Dunkirk is embedded in British collective memory, how many Britons can recall that Finns were interned on the Isle of Man, that enemy soldiers developed British infrastructure in Orkney, or that British subjects were sent to concentration camps from Guernsey? Such experiences, tangential to the dominant British war narrative, are commemorated elsewhere in the 'other British Isles'. In this remarkable contribution to British Island Studies, Daniel Travers pursues these histories and their commemoration across numerous local sites of memory: museums, heritage sites and public spaces. He examines the way these island identities assert their own distinctiveness over the British wartime story, and ultimately the way they fit into the ongoing discourse about how the memory of the Second World War has been constructed since 1945.
Author: Karen Schneider Publisher: University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 0813161347 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
Loving Arms examines the war-related writings of five British women whose works explore the connections among gender, war, and story-telling. While not the first study to relate the subjects of gender and war, it is the first within a growing body of criticism to focus specifically on British culture during and after World War II. Evoking the famous "St. Crispin's Day" speech from Henry V and then her own father's account of being moved to tears on V-J Day because he had been too young to fight, Karen Schneider posits that the war story has a far-reaching potency. She admits -- perhaps for all of us -- that such stories "had powerfully shaped my consciousness in ways I could not completely resist." How a story is narrated and by whom are matters of no small importance. As widely defined and accepted, war stories are men's stories. If we are to hear an "other" story of war, then we must listen to the stories women tell. Many of the war stories written by women insist that war is not the condition of men but rather the condition of humanity, beginning with relations between the sexes. For the five women whose work is examined in Loving Arms -- Stevie Smith, Katharine Burdekin, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and Doris Lessing -- this latter point was particularly relevant. Their positions as women within a patriarchal, militarist culture that was externally threatened by an overtly fascist one led to an acute ambivalence, says Schneider. Though all five women perceived the war from substantially different perspectives, each in her own way exposed and critiqued the seductive power of war and war stories, with their densely interwoven tropes of masculinity and nationalism. Yet these writers' conflicting impulses of loyalty to England and resistance to the war betray their ambivalence. Loving Arms will interest students of twentieth-century British literature and culture, gender studies, and narratology. Even today, we maintain an unabated love affair with the war story. But unless we listen to what the women had to say fifty years ago, we are doomed to hear only "the same old story."
Author: Daniel Travers Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
This dissertation studies Second World War 'sites of memory' in the islands of Jersey, Orkney and the Isle of Man, to determine if each island celebrates the war's events as Britain does, or if they have charted their own mnemonic course. It builds on the work of Angus Calder, Malcolm Smith, and Mark Connelly, who have explored how popular conception of the Second World War in Britain has been structured around a certain set of commemorative motifs, most of which centre on Winston Churchill and the events of 1940. The British war narrative is now commonly referred to as the 'Churchillian paradigm' or 'finest-hour myth', and continues to be the driving force in commemoration and memorialization on the British mainland. The three islands in this study are culturally and historically distinct from Britain, and each has strong notions of its own 'island identity'. Each also possesses a tangential and divisive domestic experience of war, one which is often minimized in the iconography of the Churchillian paradigm. Jersey was occupied by Nazi Germany from 1940 to 1945, Orkney was home to several thousand Italian POWs who built important infrastructure in the island, and the Isle of Man was home to 14,000 German, Finnish, Japanese, and Italian internees in what one critic has called 'a bespattered page' in the nation's history. By examining 'sites of memory'- museums, heritage sites, commemorations, celebrations, philately, and use of public space-this dissertation shows that each island simultaneously accepts and rejects elements of the finest-hour myth in their collective memory. Each island displays its unique (though often quite negative) heritage in order to differentiate itself from Britain, while at the same time allowing them, at certain events, to participate in celebration of Britain's 'greatest victory'. In this way, islands' use 'Britishness' pragmatically, by basking in traditionally 'British' commemorative tropes, while at the same time deepening their own cultural and historical sovereignty.
Author: Alan Allport Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 1101974699 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 641
Book Description
From statesmen and military commanders to ordinary Britons, a bold, sweeping history of Britain's entrance into World War II—and its efforts to survive it—illuminating the ways in which the war permanently transformed a nation and its people “Might be the single best examination of British politics, society and strategy in these four years that has ever been written.” —The Wall Street Journal Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict’s first crucial years, Alan Allport tackles pressing questions such as whether the war could have been avoided, how it could have been lost, how well the British lived up to their own values, and ultimately, what difference the war made to the fate of the nation. In answering these questions, he reexamines our assumptions and paints a vivid portrait of the ways in which the Second World War transformed British culture and society. This bracing account draws on a lively cast of characters—from the political and military leaders who made the decisions, to the ordinary citizens who lived through them—in a comprehensible and compelling single history of forty-six million people. A sweeping and groundbreaking epic, Britain at Bay gives us a fresh look at the opening years of the war, and illuminates the integral moments that, for better or for worse, made Britain what it is today.
Author: Simon Hamon Publisher: Frontline Books ISBN: 1473851629 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
In the summer of 1940 the British Isles stood isolated and alone facing the might of a seemingly unstoppable German war machine. Never before had the United Kingdom been in a state of such uncertainty and possible peril. Fortunately the full breadth of the English Channel held back Hitler's armies, and his ambition. Not so for the Channel Islands which stand just a few miles from the French coast. To abandon British territory to the enemy was unthinkable, yet the defence of the Channel Islands was impracticable, if not impossible. It was decided, therefore, to evacuate as many as wished to leave. This is the story of the muddled evacuation, of homes, animals and families left behind, of the German bombing of the islands, the fear of those left behind, and of those first days of German Occupation, told by the Islanders themselves through memoirs and letters, the local newspapers, and the politicians who decided the fate of tens of thousands of men women and children.
Author: Thomas Parrish Publisher: Smithsonian ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
Discusses the emissaries sent by President Roosevelt to Britain in early 1941 while attempting to assess Winston Churchill's drinking habits and Britain's ability to resist Nazi Germany, covering the personalities and exploits of individuals such as Harry Hopkins and W. Averill Harriman.
Author: Simon Hamon Publisher: Frontline Books ISBN: 9781399078825 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
In the summer of 1940 the British Isles stood isolated and alone facing the might of a seemingly unstoppable German war machine. Fortunately the full breadth of the English Channel held back Hitler's armies, and his ambition. Not so for the Channel Islands which stand just a few miles from the French coast. To abandon British territory to the enemy
Author: Duncan Barrett Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 147114819X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
True-life recollections from the Channel Islanders who were the only British subjects to live under Nazi rule in WWII. 'An absolutely fascinating account of life under German rule in the Channel Islands during the war. As a Guernsey girl I grew up with these stories and recognise family and friends in these pages. Duncan Barrett has done a brilliant job of reflecting the peculiar challenges that existed for those living under occupation. It is an under-told story of an extraordinary time in recent British history.' - Sarah Montague, The Today Programme presenter. **The new book from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Sugar Girls** In the summer of 1940, Britain stood perilously close to invasion. One by one, the nations of Europe had fallen to the unstoppable German Blitzkrieg, and Hitler’s sights were set on the English coast. And yet, following the success of the Battle of Britain, the promised invasion never came. The prospect of German jackboots landing on British soil retreated into the realm of collective nightmares. But the spectre of what might have been is one that has haunted us down the decades, finding expression in counterfactual history and outlandish fictions. What would a British occupation have looked like? The answer lies closer to home than we think, in the experiences of the Channel Islanders – the only British people to bear the full brunt of German Occupation. For five years, our nightmares became their everyday reality. The people of Guernsey, Jersey and Sark got to know the enemy as those on the mainland never could, watching in horror as their towns and villages were suddenly draped in Swastika flags, their cinemas began showing Nazi propaganda films, and Wehrmacht soldiers goose-stepped down their highstreets. Those who resisted the regime, such as the brave men and women who set up underground newspapers or sheltered slave labourers, encountered the full force of Nazi brutality. But in the main, the Channel Islands occupation was a ‘model’ one, a prototype for how the Fuhrer planned to run mainland Britain. As a result, the stories of the islanders are not all misery and terror. Many, in fact are rather funny – tales of plucky individuals trying to get by in almost impossible circumstances, and keeping their spirits up however they could. Unlike their compatriots on the mainland, the islanders had no Blitz to contend with, but they met the thousand other challenges the war brought with a similar indomitable spirit. The story of the Channel Islands during the war is the history that could so nearly have come to pass for the rest of us. Based on interviews with over a hundred islanders who lived through it, this book tells that story from beginning to end, opening the lid on life in Hitler’s British Isles.