Description
Book SynopsisSnapshots of gaiety and celebration are how some people today think of Britain in 1945. This book tells the real story of what happened when millions of ex-servicemen returned home. It draws on their personal letters and diaries to illuminate the darker side of the homecoming experience for ex-servicemen, their families and society at large.
Trade Review"'A highly impressive debut, demonstrating great scholarship and an ability to balance the humane detail of fractured lives with a wider perspective of the political and social context... certainly the most insightful text on the 1940s to have appeared this year.' Ian Cawood, Times Literary Supplement 'Allport's wonderfully insightful study asks us to rethink the conventional chronology... It is not only refreshingly free of jargon but remarkably moving. If all academic history were written this way, popular historians would be out of a job.' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'A masterful study of the subject... Demobbed is a detailed and sympathetic examination of this difficult story. Making imaginative use of contemporary court and press accounts as well as the holdings of the Imperial War Museum Archive, it outlines the tribulations of a damaged generation, intertwining personal testimony with the author's thoughtful and cogent analysis... [Demobbed] wears its erudition lightly and has a pleasing, easy style.' BBC History Magazine"
