{"title":"Books by Clair Wills","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781802063028","title":"Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother's Secrets","description":"Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2024, Irish Book AwardsShortlisted for the TLS Ackerley Prize 2025Shortlisted for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Prize 2025 How far would you go for the missing?Blending private and public history, cultural analysis, family memoir and autobiography, Clair Wills explores profound questions about memory, loss, motherhood and emigration.  She traces a history of sexual secrecy through four generations of unplanned pregnancies in her own family, stretching from the 1890s to the 1980s and from the West of Ireland to Massachusetts, London and the English countryside, dramatizing the power of secret-keeping as a form of care, particularly between women, but also as violence and exclusion.   At the heart of her search is a cousin who went missing from her own family, born in a Mother and Baby Home in the 1950s, and brought up in an institution.  Wills asks not only what happened, but why? Why did families consent to the institutional care and control of unmarried mothers and their children? Why did the system make sense to ordinary families, and how can we make sense of it now? What questions should we be asking about guilt, blame, and responsibility?In order to uncover how people thought about illicit sex, illegitimacy, and institutions, Wills followed the tracks laid down in family stories and anecdotes. She interprets the gaps in stories – the missing bits—as places where the past was both preserved and disavowed. We are all born into families, whether or not we are allowed to belong to them. Wills asks us to undertake a radical reshaping of our idea of the family, and of the history of generation. We are all part of the historical archive—the remembering and forgetting is in us, whether we like it or not.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":54911759024501,"sku":"9781802063028","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57685964718453,"sku":"9780241640951","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781802063028.jpg?v=1792599227"},{"product_id":"9780141974972","title":"Lovers and Strangers","description":"\u003cb\u003eSHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018 \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTLS\u003c\/i\u003e BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Generous and empathetic ... opens up postwar migration in all its richness' Sukhdev Sandhu, \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Groundbreaking, sophisticated, original, open-minded ... essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not only the transformation of British society after the war but also its character today' Piers Brendon, \u003ci\u003eLiterary Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Lyrical, full of wise and original observations' David Goodhart, \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe battered and exhausted Britain of 1945 was desperate for workers - to rebuild, to fill the factories, to make the new NHS work. From all over the world and with many motives, thousands of individuals took the plunge. Most assumed they would spend just three or four years here, sending most of their pay back home, but instead large numbers stayed - and transformed the country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on an amazing array of unusual and surprising sources, Clair Wills' wonderful new book brings to life the incredible diversity and strangeness of the migrant experience. She introduces us to lovers, scroungers, dancers, homeowners, teachers, drinkers, carers and many more to show the opportunities and excitement as much as the humiliation and poverty that could be part of the new arrivals' experience. Irish, Bengalis, West Indians, Poles, Maltese, Punjabis and Cypriots battled to fit into an often shocked Britain and, to their own surprise, found themselves making permanent homes. As Britain picked itself up again in the 1950s migrants set about changing life in their own image, through music, clothing, food, religion, but also fighting racism and casual and not so casual violence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLovers and Strangers\u003c\/i\u003e is an extremely important book, one that is full of enjoyable surprises, giving a voice to a generation who had to deal with the reality of life surrounded by 'white strangers' in their new country.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56225112424821,"sku":"9780141974972","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141974972_c1a429d7-a2e9-4ce7-927c-e1f778d3d691.jpg?v=1786011677"},{"product_id":"9780571221066","title":"That Neutral Island","description":"Of the countries that remained neutral during the Second World War, none was more controversial than Ireland, with accusations of betrayal and hypocrisy poisoning the media. Whereas previous histories of Ireland in the war years have focused on high politics, That Neutral Island brings to life the atmosphere of a country forced to live under rationing, heavy censorship and the threat of invasion. It unearths the motivations of those thousands who left Ireland to fight in the British forces and shows how ordinary people tried to make sense of the Nazi threat through the lens of antagonism towards Britain.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311803150709,"sku":"9780571221066","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571221066_1f32697d-1e78-4fb4-9c39-444fa97fa1d0.jpg?v=1786013631"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-clair-wills.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}