The second of Daniel Todman's two sweeping volumes on Great Britain and World War II, Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947, begins with the Fall of Singapore in February 1942 to the Japanese--the event Winston Churchill called the "worst disaster" in British military history. Japan took 80,000 British, Australian, and Indian troops as prisoners of war, throwing Britain's position into uncertainty and threatening its former empire.

As in Britain's War: Into Battle,1937-1941, Todman highlights the inter-connectedness of the British experience in this moment and others, focusing keenly on its inhabitants, its defenders, and Churchill's Cabinet. Todman explores the plight of families doomed to spend the war struggling with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and, above all, the absence of their loved ones and the uncertainty of their return. It also documents the war-changing impact of the entrance into the war by the United States, and its gradual stewardship.

Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 is a triumph of narrative and research. Todman explains complex issues of strategy and economics clearly while never losing sight of the human consequences--at home and abroad--of the way that Britain fought its war. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped Great Britain and the world.


Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 03/18/2020
ISBN: 9780190658489
Pages: 976
Weight: 3.30lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.50w x 2.30d