The Thirties: an intimate history

GARDINER, Juliet

HarperPress

With the onslaught on Britain's major cities which began in September 1940, the Nazis aimed to break morale and to destroy the country's capacity to wage war. Using evidence from a range of public and private documents, Juliet Gardiner shows how the attacks instead engendered a stubborn resolve in the British populace and prompted them to develop innovative survival strategies. But her history does not ignore the darker underside of the Blitz, from official incompetence and mismanagement to outright profiteering and crime.

The Blitz: The British Under Attack

History

Europe

Harper Press

J.B. Priestley famously described the 'three Englands' he saw in the 1930s: Old England; nineteenth-century England and the new, post-war England. Thirties Britain was, indeed, a world of contrasts, ultimately torn between the image of a nation rendered hopeless by the Depression, unemployment and international tensions, and that of a Britain of complacent suburban home-owners with a baby Austin in every garage.Now Juliet Gardiner, acclaimed author of the award-winning 'Wartime', provides a fresh perspective on that restless, uncertain, ambitious decade, bringing the complex experience of thirties Britain alive through newspapers, magazines, memoirs, letters, diaries and interviews.Gardiner captures the essence of a people part-mesmerised by 'modernism' in architecture, art, in the proliferation of 'dream palaces', the insistence on fitness and fresh air, the obsession with speed, the growth and regimentation of leisure, the democratisation of the countryside, the celebration of elegance, glamour and sensation. Yet, at the same time, this was a nation imbued with a pervasive awareness of loss - of Britain's influence in the world, of accepted political, social and cultural signposts and finally, of peace itself.

The Thirties: An Intimate History

From the author of 'Wartime' comes an outstanding history of the most sustained onslaught ever endured by Britain's civilian population -- the Blitz. September 1940 marked the beginning of Nazi Germany's aerial attack on civilian Britain. Lasting eight months, the Blitz was the form of warfare that had been predicted throughout the 1930s, and that the British people had feared since Neville Chamberlain's declaration that Britain was at war. Images of Britain's devastated cities are among the most iconic of the Second World War. Yet compared with other great moments of that war -- Dunkirk, the North African campaign, D-Day -- the Blitz remains curiously unexamined. Apart from fragmentary accounts and local records, there is little in the way of a comprehensive account of the experience that so many British civilians went through -- as well as the social, political and cultural implications of the bombardment. Designed to break the morale of the British population, the nightly bombings certainly did devastate. But, as Juliet Gardiner shows in this hugely important book, they also served to galvanise the nation; from those terrifying eight months, a new determination amongst people and politicians steadily emerged. Revealing, original and beautifully written, 'The Blitz' is a much-needed exploration of one of the most important moments in Second World War history.

Blitz: The British Under Attack

From Britain’s leading social historian, a lyrical look at the changes to women’s lives since 1940, told with examples from her own life. The book provides an intimate, brilliant account of feminism over the last 6 decades.
“A young woman wearing a navy-blue duffle coat stood shivering in the vaulted Victorian booking hall of Temple Meads station in Bristol looking uncertainly around her. It was 1st January 1960 and the woman was me. I was sixteen years old, and I had run away from home.”
Over the next ten years, the world changed around young Juliet Gardiner – as it did for most women in Britain. It was the start of a decade that was to be momentous for Britain’s history – politically, economically, socially and culturally.
As one of Britain’s best-known social historians, Juliet Gardiner writes here about the span of women’s lives from her birth during the Second World War to the election of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister. Using episodes from her own life as starting points to illuminate the broader history in society at large, she explores changing ideas towards birth and adoption, the importance of education for girls, the opportunities offered by university, to expectations of work and motherhood, not to mention her generation’s yearning for freedom.
Everyone has his or her history and at the same time is part of history as this book so perceptively and beautifully demonstrates. As a work of living history, both lyrical and personal, Joining the Dots is an accessible and empowering story of how one mid-twentieth-century woman grew into a world so different from the one into which she was born. It is a story of bed-sits, sexual choice, motherhood and marriage, feminism, family planning and professional ambition.

Joining the Dots: A Woman In Her Time

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

William Collins

War on the Home Front takes you through the many facets of wartime Britain: from the Phoney War to the devastation of the Blitz; from the Home Guard and the Land Girls to the invasion of the Channel Islands; and from evacuation and rationing to code-breaking and the eventual victory celebrations. With 100 illustrations and 10 removable documents, it offers a unique perspective of the era.

IWM War on the Home Front

Andre Deutsch

In 1985, the monthly magazine, History Today, ran a series of articles on different branches of history and the problems involved for historians in studying, researching and writing in these areas of history. A selection of these essays now appears in book form, edited by Juliet Gardiner.

What Is History Today ... ?

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

What Is History Today...?

Americas

Prometheus+books

The Brontes at Haworth

Random House Value Publishing

The Brontes at Haworth is the story both of the real world of the Brontes at Haworth Parsonage, their home on the edge of the lonely Yorkshire moors, and of the imaginary worlds they spun for themselves in their novels and poetry. Wherever possible, their story is told using their own words - the letters they wrote to each other, Emily and Anne's secret diaries, and Emily's exchanges with the luminaries of literary England - or those of the people who were closest to them - their brother Branwell, their father the Reverend Patrick Bronte, and their novelist friend Mrs. Gaskell. The Brontes sketched and painted their worlds too, in delicate ink washes and watercolors of family and friends, animals, and the English moors. These pictures illuminate the text, as do the tiny drawings the Bronte children made to illustrate their imaginary worlds. In addition, there are facsimiles of their letters and diaries, paintings by artists of the day, and pictures of period household items. The Brontes at Haworth is a unique and privileged view of the real lives of these women, writers, and sisters - their own view - and is certain to be cherished by any admirer of this remarkable literary family.

The Brontes at Haworth: The World Within

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Clarkson/Potter

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