Alan Allport – författare

A social history of the ordinary British soldier during World War II“Reflects impressively wide reading, and commands respect for its shrewd judgments and lack of sentimentality.”—Max Hastings, New York Review of Books"The stories of these brave but bewildered civilians in uniform are as illuminating as searchlights in a dark age of traumatic war."—Iain Finlayson, Times (London)More than three 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 Allport’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.

'There isn't a better history of the Second World War than this' David EdgertonBy 1942, Churchill faced a vastly different war than the one he'd inherited from Neville Chamberlain. Britain was no longer alone; the Soviets were now an unlikely ally in the East, and Pearl Harbor had finally pushed America into action. Yet the scale of violence remained unchanged. On average, seven British men, women and children were killed every hour of the Second World War. The country would never be the same again.In Advance Britannia, historian Alan Allport reveals the war as it was lived - from the battlefields to the ration books, in the War Ministry and in the air raid shelters. Mixing social history with dramatic storytelling, this is a definitive account of the war that reshaped the world.

The trials, troubles and triumphs of returning home after the end of World War Two.What happened when millions of British servicemen were “demobbed”—demobilized—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 large—a gripping story that’s in danger of being lost to national memory.

The author of Britain at Bay—which The Wall Street Journal said may be “the single best examination of British politics, society, and strategy [from 1938 to 1941] that has ever been written”—picks up his sweeping social history in 1942, when what was once a regional war has become an intricate, globe-spanning conflict, with profound consequences for the British Empire and for a British people already exhausted after more than two years of fighting.“The Japanese, gone berserk, have struck in the Pacific, joined up with the Axis, declared war on us,” one British soldier wrote in his diary. “So the Yanks are now our comrades in arms, and the whole world’s ablaze.”By 1942, Churchill found himself facing a vastly different war than the one he’d inherited from Neville Chamberlain back in 1940. In the East, the Soviets were now a co-belligerent (if not exactly a firm ally). And the aid he’d so longed for from across the Atlantic had finally arrived, when Pearl Harbor pushed America to end its “dithering and buggering about.” But with Parliament and the public losing faith in him, Churchill had to manage a war that now stretched into the Pacific and Indian Oceans, threatening Britain’s colonies, all the while negotiating a new relationship with Roosevelt and Stalin—two jostling, unpredictable comrades-in-arms fully prepared to carve up the world to their own satisfaction.In this sequel to his prizewinning Britain at Bay, Alan Allport completes his superlative history of Britain’s role in World War II, once again weaving together the political, military, social, and cultural to tell a multifaceted story of a country forced to endure the profound stresses of total war. Now, Britain is no longer at bay. But any victory remains far off, and its costs will be great. Can the British win the war without sacrificing so much along the way that they then lose the peace?

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 JournalHere 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.

WINNER OF THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWNA TIMES AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR'Britain's wartime story has been told many times, but never as cleverly as this.' Dominic SandbrookIn the bleak first half of the Second World War, Britain stood alone against the Axis forces. Isolated and outmanoeuvred, it seemed as though she might fall at any moment. Only an extraordinary effort of courage - by ordinary men and women - held the line. The Second World War is the defining experience of modern British history, a new Iliad for our own times. But, as Alan Allport reveals in this, the first part of a major new two-volume history, the real story was often very different from the myth that followed it. From the subtle moral calculus of appeasement to the febrile dusts of the Western Desert, Allport interrogates every aspect of the conflict - and exposes its echoes in our own age.Challenging orthodoxy and casting fresh light on famous events from Dunkirk to the Blitz, this is the real story of a clash between civilisations that remade the world in its image.

'There is no silly sensationalism in this book, merely sound storytelling and measured judgments ... Admirably provocative' Max Hastings, Sunday Times'As complete and compelling a picture of Britain in the Second World War as one could hope to read' Phillips O' Brien'A must read for anyone who is interested in what really happened in World War 2' Anne Sebba'There isn't a better history of the Second World War than this remarkably fresh account' David EdgertonBy 1942, Churchill faced a vastly different war than the one he'd inherited from Neville Chamberlain. Britain was no longer alone; the Soviets were now an unlikely ally in the East, and Pearl Harbor had finally pushed America into action. Yet the scale of violence remained unchanged. On average, seven British men, women and children were killed every hour of the Second World War. The country would never be the same again.In Advance Britannia, historian Alan Allport reveals the war as it was lived - from the battlefields to the ration books, in the War Ministry and in the air raid shelters. Mixing social history with dramatic storytelling, this is a definitive account of the war that reshaped the world.