{"product_id":"9781445654034","title":"The Real Dad's Army : The Story of the Home Guard by Norman Longmate","description":"The enduring popularity of the BBC TV series Dad's Army has focused attention on one of the strangest and least military armies ever formed - the British Home Guard. What started as an improvised band of volunteers had grown by 1942 into a conscripted, disciplined and well-equipped force with a strength of nearly two million men. Norman Longmate, himself a Home Guard veteran and an authority on wartime Britain, has collected together a wealth of hilarious anecdotes as well as all the unlikely facts to produce the first popular history of the Home Guard to be written since the war. Longmate, ex-Private `F' Company, 3rd Sussex Battalion, Home Guard, joined `Dad's Army' at the same age as the fictional character `Pike', and to this day he contends that the much-loved sitcom was remarkably accurate in its portrayal of life in the Home Guard.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56300093112693,"sku":"9781445654034","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781445654034.jpg?v=1762787082","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781445654034","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}