That Burning Summer: links and background resources
Interested in exploring any of the history, ideas or places in That Burning Summer? Here are some good starting points – books, short stories, websites, online articles, films, museums etc, all loosely grouped by theme, many of which obviously overlap. Clearly, this is far from definitive. But all proved useful in different ways while I was writing the novel.
Romney Marsh
Edward Carpenter: Romney Marsh at War (1999)
Anne Reeves and David Eve: Sheep-Keeping and Lookers’ Huts on Romney Marsh (1998)
Brian Ferry & Dorothy Beck: Dungeness before 1960: The Landscape and the People, 2004
Stuart Hilton, Kent and Sussex, 1940
Museums on Romney Marsh: http://www.theromneymarsh.net/visitors/museums.htm#Lydd_museum
The Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust – and a good if slightly out-of-date article by Sophie Campbell about visiting the churches.
Brenzett Aeronautical Museum Trust http://www.brenzettaero.co.uk/Brenzett_Aeronautical_Museum_Trust/Home.html
Find out more about the history of smuggling on Romney Marsh. (And more info here.)
Lack of Moral Fibre/Flying Fatigue
Joanna Bourke: Fear – a Cultural History (Virago 2005)
Jonathan Croall: Don’t You Know There’s A War On: Voices from the Home Front (Hutchinson 1988)
Allan D. English: A Predisposition to Cowardice? Aviation Psychology and the Genesis of ‘Lack of Moral Fibre [Source: War & Society, Volume 13, Number 1, May 1995 , pp. 15-34(20)]
Ben Shepherd: A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists, 1914-1994 (Pimlico, 2002)
C. P. Symonds, ‘The Human Response to Flying Stress: Lecture 1: Neurosis in Flying Personnel‘, The British Medical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4326 (Dec. 4, 1943), pp. 703-706
Home Front & Spies
Home Front: BBC – WW2 People’s War - Spy Fever & Kent
Graham Greene, ‘The Lieutenant Died Last’ (Old Bill Purves, the poacher, meets a parachute corps) (short story in Collier’s Weekly, June 29, 1940, which inspired Cavalcanti’s film Went the Day Well? - here’s an article on its publication history)
Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (Heinemann, 1943; Vintage, 2006)
Jean Rose Freedman, Whistling in the Dark: Memory and Culture in Wartime London (University Press of Kentucky, 1999)
ed. Neil Hanson with Tom Priestley, Priestley’s Wars (Great Northen Books, 2008)
Nicolas Hawkes, The story of J.B. Priestley’s Postscripts (2008)
N.B. This is available from The J.B.Priestley Society. (If only this Archive on Four and this series were still available – fingers crossed for repeats soon. In the meanwhile, do read this post by Alison Cullingford, Librarian of the Univeristy of Bradford’s Special Collections, where the Priestley Archive is housed.)
Naomi Royde Smith Outside Information: A Diary of Rumour, (1941) (The Spectator‘s review of this in 1941is worth quoting: ‘Londoners now have to suffer what the inhabitants of Madrid once patiently endured – visits from the well-meaning who take back highly coloured accounts of their experiences.)
Berry Mayall & Virginia Morrow, You Can Help Your Country: English children’s work during the Second World War, (Institute of Education, 2011)
Sadie Ward, War in the Countryside, 1939-45, (David & Charles, 1988)
Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption 1939-1955, (OUP, 2002)
Donald Thomas, An Underground at War: Spivs, Deserters, Racketeers and Civilians in the Second World War, (John Murray, 2003)
A.G. Street From Dusk till Dawn (1943: republished by Oxford Paperbacks in 1989 with subtitle ‘The Sedgebury Wallop Home Guard Platoon Prepare for War’)
Norman Longmate, How we lived then: a history of everyday life during the Second World War, (1973; 2002)
Anthony Livesey, Are we at war? Letters to the Times 1939-45, (1989)
Trustees of the Mass Observation, Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of ‘Housewife, 49′, (Profile, 2006)
Angus Calder,The People’s War: Britain 1939-1945 (Pimlico new ed. 1992) and The Myth of the Blitz (Pimlico new ed 1992)
Midge Gillies Waiting for Hitler: Voices from Britain on the Brink of Invasion, (Hodder, 2006)
Juliet Gardiner, Wartime Britain 1939-1945, (Headline, 2004)
DVDs: The Complete Humphrey Jennings Vol 2: Fires Were Started (includes The Heart of Britain, Words for Battle, Fires Were Started & The Silent Village) BFI
The Next of Kin, (1942)
Invasion
Peter Fleming Invasion 1940: An account of the German preparations and the British counter-measure, (Rupert Hart-Davis, London 1957)
Richard Overy, The Battle of Britain: Myth and Reality, (Penguin, 2010)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, (First published as Pilote de guerre, 1942; the translation I used was by William Rees, first published by Penguin in 1995)
Iréne Nemirovsky, Suite Française, (Vintage, 2007)
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, (Vintage, 2011)
Richard C. Lukas, Did the children cry?: Hitler’s War Against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945, and Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944 (both Hippocrene, 2001)
Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and Poles in the Second World War
Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (Allen Lane, 2008),
Aviation history and archaeology
Dilip Sarkar, Missing in Action: Resting in Peace? (Ramrod, 1998)
Aircraft crash sites – information from English Heritage
To Dig or Not to Dig? History Today
R.A.Saville-Sneath Aircraft Recognition (A Penguin Special first published 1941: reproduction editions easily available)
Polish Pilots in the Battle of Britain
Lynne Olson & Stanley Cloud, For Your Freedom and Ours: The Kosciuszko Squadron – Forgotten Heroes of World War II, (2004)
Robert Gretyngier, in association with Wojtek Matusiak, Poles in Defence of Great Britain, July 1940-June 1941 (London, Grub St, 2001)
Josef Zielnski, Polish Airmen in the Battle of Britain, 2005 (A very useful book, with a short chapter on every airman, but not easy to get hold of)
Adam Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in World War II (1995, Pen & Sword Aviation, 2009)
Kenneth K. Koskodan No Greater Ally: The Untold Story of Poland’s Forces in World War II (Osprey, 2011)
Arkady Fiedler, 303 Squadron: The Legendary Battle of Britain Fighter Squadron (2010)
F.B.Czarmomski, They Fight for Poland: The War in the First Person, (1941 – Front Line Library)
Patrick Bishop, Fighter Boys: Saving Britain 1940, (Harper, 2003)
Jonathan Falconer, Life as a Battle of Britain Pilot, (The History Press, 2007)
Battle of Britain monument…find out about the Polish airmen.
RAF Museum online exhibition on Polish Pilots
Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum
Battle of Britain heritage trail
Pacifism and Conscientious Objection
Peace Pledge Union website – especially the Conscientious Objection Project
Frances Partridge, A Pacifists War (Hogarth Press, 1978)
Kenneth Mellanby’s Guinea Pigs article
Caroline Moorehead, Troublesome People: Enemies of War: 1916-1986 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987)
Rachel Barker, Conscience, Government and War, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982)
Denis Hayes, Challenge of Conscience: the Story of the Conscientious Objectors of 1939-1949, (Published for the Central Board for Conscientious Objectors, Allen & Unwin, 1949)
Sonya Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945, (OUP, 2004)
Felicity Goodall A Question of Conscience (1997) reprinted as We Will Not Go to War: Conscientious Objection during the World Wars by The History Press, 2010.
Clifford Simons, ed. The Objectors, (Times Press: Anthony Gibbs & Phillips)
Martin Ceadel ’A Legitimate Peace Movement: The case of Britain, 1918-1945′ in Challenge to Mars: Essays on Pacifism from 1918 to 1945 ed Peter Brock & Thomas P Socknat, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999)
Any questions? Broken links? Other suggestions? Please do get in touch via the comments or email me.
