This book presents a new and vivid survey of politics, society, culture and military strategy in Britain between 1939 and 1945. It covers the major historical debates in these areas.
For someone who really enjoys learning about the second world war, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There were certain points, specifically in the political and economic chapters, where the author allowed their personal biases to get in the way of the topic at hand (cough cough they like Margaret Thatcher.) With that being said, for this book only being a little over 100 pages, I thought that the content was interesting and the layout of the chapters made sense. If I had to be picky, I would have moved the military strategy chapter (chapter 5) up, in order for it to correlate with the political acts that were occuring in Britain at the time. Another thing, and this might be for a different class, but I wish it highlighted more on the colonies and dominions. That would definitely be focused on more heavily in Modern Imperialism, but the author made it seem as though there were only men with Yorkshire or uppity accents fighting on the front lines to me. I also think that it was interesting that the author did not only focus on the political, economic, and military aspects of the second world war. There was a section about the rise of cinema and radio as news forms, and how propaganda changed throughout the war as a political strategy. Overall, I would recommend this book to someone who wants to know more about the history of Britain during the second world war. Even if it is not something that you think is inherently interesting, I think that opening your eyes to what happened is important.