{"title":"Books by Alan Allport","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781781257838","title":"Advance Britannia","description":"'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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57682600100213,"sku":"9781781257845","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":55896453841269,"sku":"9781781257838","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781781257845_a71f961e-2d46-4ae7-88fb-16ed078889c5.jpg?v=1792511533"},{"product_id":"9780300226386","title":"Browned Off and Bloody–Minded – The British Soldier Goes to War 1939–1945","description":"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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56232206795125,"sku":"9780300226386","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300226386_e123ffa3-1baf-4e70-bd1f-a96d16927d10.jpg?v=1786012169"},{"product_id":"9780300168860","title":"Demobbed – Coming Home After World War Two","description":"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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56232662499701,"sku":"9780300168860","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300168860_bda1fda3-1bd7-4d9b-a16c-91e8e0e87c52.jpg?v=1786012683"},{"product_id":"9781781257821","title":"Britain at Bay","description":"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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303975268725,"sku":"9781781257821","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781781257821_5adf7905-5f10-4e7f-8a6d-4ba014b86045.jpg?v=1786025491"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-alan-allport.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}