Churchill's Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain

by John Welshman

"We were dumped at a roundabout with our labels on. People pulled and tugged at the children they wanted. It was a bit like a cattle market... people just waded in. I went with a lady and her daughter - she was like a second Mum." --
Alexander King, evacuated aged eleven.

Based on the stories of thirteen children and adults, Churchill's Children tells the often moving story of the evacuation of schoolchildren in Britain during the Second World War, from the first mass evacuations of 1939 through to the lesser-known but equally important evacuations of 1940 and 1944.


John Welshman skilfully captures the experience of evacuation - the happiness or sadness, excitement or boredom, resentment or acceptance, love or abuse that the children experienced during their time away from home. Along the way, the book addresses some of the fundamental questions raised by
evacuation. How were relationships between children and parents affected by the long periods apart? What happened when brothers and sisters were separated? And how did the children feel when they went home?

But the book looks at the adults too - at how the officials in charge of billeting and teachers got caught up in events, and at how civil servants and researchers became involved in the ensuing debates. As Welshman shows, the evacuation was to have a significant impact on shaping attitudes in the
post-war world to everything from reconstruction and state intervention to poverty, social class, and the welfare state. However, the analysis aside, what this book perhaps offers above all is a highly evocative portrait of a very different Britain, reminding us just how much has changed in the
seventy years since the Second World War.

Genres: History, World War II, British Literature

368 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2010

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Attempting to tell the story chronologically and with so many personal accounts makes for a clunky read. Fascinating personal stories are bogged down with minute detail on policitians education and dates of reports. A valuable but messy book.

[eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

i thought this was set out really well (and i have read so many books like this!!) the choice of picking a few children to focus on was very well carried out and worked so well! very interesting, some great quotes

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little tough to get through, because of the amount of information given, but worth the effort. I really enjoyed the stories of the evacuated children and learning about the effects of this experience, good and bad.

[John Poquette · Rating 1 out of 5]

Researched in excruciating detail. Too much focus on the minutiae and lack of extrapolation into broader themes made this book difficult to finish.