Synopses & Reviews
More than three-and-a-half million men served in the British Army during the Second World War, the vast majority of them civilians who had never expected to become soldiers and had little idea what military life, with all its strange rituals, discomforts, and dangers, was going to be like. Alan Allportandrsquo;s rich and luminous social history examines the experience of the greatest and most terrible war in history from the perspective of these ordinary, extraordinary men, who were plucked from their peacetime families and workplaces and sent to fight for King and Country. Allport chronicles the huge diversity of their wartime trajectories, tracing how soldiers responded to and were shaped by their years with the British Army, and how that army, however reluctantly, had to accommodate itself to them. Touching on issues of class, sex, crime, trauma, and national identity, through a colorful multitude of fresh individual perspectives, the book provides an enlightening, deeply moving perspective on how a generation of very modern-minded young men responded to the challenges of a brutal and disorienting conflict.
Review
and#8220;Allportand#8217;s wonderfully insightful study asks us to rethink the conventional chronology and#8230; It is not only refreshingly free of jargon but remarkably moving. If all academic history were written this way, popular historians would be out of a job.and#8221;
and#8212;Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday TimesReview
"A wry, humane and eloquent book. Alan Allport shows how demobilized troops, their families and friends, both sought a return to normalcy and at the same time realized that life would never be the same again. Their stories linger into the present day."and#8212;Peter Mandler, author of
The English National CharacterReview
and#8220;[A] masterful study of the subject and#8230;
Demobbed is a detailed and sympathetic examination of this difficult story. Making imaginative use of contemporary court and press accounts as well as the holdings of the Imperial War Museum Archive, it outlines the tribulations of a damaged generation, intertwining personal testimony with the authorand#8217;s thoughtful and cogent analysis and#8230; [
Demobbed] wears its erudition lightly and has a pleasing, easy style.and#8221;andnbsp;
and#8212;BBC History MagazineReview
"Demobbedandnbsp; is a fascinating work. With manyandnbsp;compelling individual stories, Alan Allport plunges us into this often sad and sometimes violentandnbsp;time after the end of the Second World War. It is a powerful tale, wonderfully told." - Peter Stansky, author of The First Day of the Blitzandnbsp;
Review
"Allport's wonderfully insightful study asks us to rethink the conventional chronology . It is not only refreshingly free of jargon but remarkably moving. If all academic history were written this way, popular historians would be out of a job." -Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times
Review
andnbsp;"A compelling, sobering and thought provoking picture."and#8212;Juliet Gardiner, author of Wartime: Britain 1939-45
Review
and#8220;A highly impressive debut, demonstrating great scholarship and an ability to balance the humane detail of fractured lives with a wider perspective of the political and social context and#8230; This is a bold attempt to combine the scholarly with the popular and certainly the most insightful text on the 1940s to have appeared this year.and#8221;
and#8212;Ian Cawood, Times Literary Supplement
Review
"Wonderfully researched, sensitively written and often very moving,
Demobbed tells an important, underappreciated story that still resonates today."and#8212;David Kynaston
Review
"This is a special and a powerful book. It brims with scholarship, insight, detail and compassion. It is also very well written. Allport does full justice to a forgotten part of a great generation." -andnbsp;Peter Hennessy
Review
and#8220;Alive with portraits of individuals. . .
Demobbed is a juicy slice of life redolent of the peculiar atmosphere and singular situations unique to Britain in the mid-1940s.and#8221;--Martin Rubin,
The Washington Times
Review
"An extremely interesting and lively read which adds greatly to our understanding of the demobilization process."--Mark Connelly, The Journal of Military History
Review
Winner of the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award, as given by History Today Ltd and the book publishers Longman Pearson Education Mark Connelly - The Journal of Military History
Review
"His tone, narrative sense, and command of sources are commendable, and he lays the groundwork for further research. More than contributing a postscript to wartime historiography, this book should be of interest to all historians of twentieth-century Britain."and#8212;Chad Martin, The Journal of Modern History
Review
andquot;A welcome social history that tracks the views of the British soldiers, reluctant and otherwise, who were called up in the Second World War.andquot;andmdash;Sue Baker, The Bookseller
Review
andlsquo;andhellip;he has distilled a mass of wisdom, and gathered all manner of truths under one roof, with skill and judgement.andrsquo;andmdash;Max Hastings,
the Sunday Times.
Review
andlsquo;The stories of these brave but bewildered civilians in uniform are as illuminating as searchlights in a dark age of traumatic war.andrsquo;andmdash;Iain Finlayson,
the Times.
Review
andlsquo;Browned Off and Bloody-Minded is a deeply researched, well-written and perceptive book that tells the story of the citizen-soldiers who either joined up or were called up to fight, and of how their mores both affected the British Army and were affected by it, even long into peacetime.andrsquo;andmdash;Andrew Roberts,
Literary Review.
Review
and#39;...achieves that rare goal of being both unputdownable and rigorously researched.andrsquo;
andmdash;Victoria Harris, TLS.
Synopsis
What happened when millions of British servicemen were and#8220;demobbedand#8221;and#8212;demobilizedand#8212;after World War II? Most had been absent for years, and the joy of arrival was often clouded with ambivalence, regrets, and fears. Returning soldiers faced both practical and psychological problems, from reasserting their place in the family home to rejoining a much-altered labor force. Civilians worried that their homecoming heroes had been barbarized by their experiences and would bring crime and violence back from the battlefield. Drawing on personal letters and diaries, newspapers, reports, novels, and films, Alan Allport illuminates the darker side of the homecoming experience for ex-servicemen, their families, and society at largeand#8212;a gripping story thatand#8217;s in danger of being lost to national memory.
About the Author
Alan Allport is assistant professor of history at Syracuse University. He lives in Syracuse, NY.