The Second World War And The Other British Isles

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

True-life recollections from the Channel Islanders who were the only British subjects to live under Nazi rule in WWII.

It's 1939 - war is imminent for the people of Britain. It is becoming increasingly clear that every able bodied man will be needed on the battlefront and that British women will have to take over the jobs the men left for military service. This is the narrative of Scottish women in particular - through their stories, experiences, and sacrifices - how they not only kept Scotland and Britain alive but helped change the course of history. "Some historians like to think that the British were very fortunate when Hitler grew impatient with his attempt to run over the British Isles, becoming distracted, then moving his attention to the Russian Front. I take a different perspective. Hitler found that it was much tougher to defeat the British people than he or any of his top aides ever imagined. We had many losses in our military and civilian population, but we were able to call upon every available man to fight on the frontline because we had a secret weapon at home keeping the country surviving - Our Women!!!" - Jeanette B. Reid