The definitive account of life on the Home Front during the Second World War, which was published in 2004 to universal critical acclaim.
Juliet Gardiner's critically acclaimed book - the first in a generation to tell the people's story of the Second World War - offers a compelling and comprehensive account of the pervasiveness of war on the Home Front. The book has been commended for its inclusion of many under-described aspects of the Home Front, and alongside familiar stories of food shortages, evacuation and the arrival of the GIs, are stories of Conscientious Objectors, persecuted Italians living in Britain and Lumber Jills working in the New Forest. Drawing on a multitude of sources, many previously unpublished, she tells the story of those six gruelling years in voices from the Orkney Islands to Cornwall, from the Houses of Parliament to the Nottinghamshire mines.
Juliet Gardiner's 'Wartime' provides a marvellously rich, and often entertaining, recreation of life on the Home Front, 1939-45, drawing on an enormous range of oral testimony and memoir. - The Scotsman
From lost loves to crabby children to the sorrow of receiving the worst possible news, this is a remarkably personal picture of wartime life at home. - The Good Book Guide
Irresistably unputdownable - Scotland On Sunday (Angus Calder)
Danger, courage, deprivation, exhaustion, fear, humour and that old enemy 'boredom' were endured for six years. This exhilarating book is the voice of these people. - Despatches
humorous and deeply moving - Despatches
In a book replete with treasures, everyone will find a special jewel. - The Times Literary Supplement (David Stafford)
Juliet Gardiner's book is ...wonderfully readable - BBC History Magazine
after the torrents of film and forests of print devoted to her subject over the last four decades, it is exhilarating that Gardiner finds so many under-described aspects of the Home Front to document through her fresh witnesses. - BBC History Magazine
Juliet Gardiner is a historian with wide academic and commercial credentials: After taking a doctorate at London University she edited History Today, was Academic Director at Weidenfeld and Nicolson and the Head of Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University. She has written numerous academic papers, contributed to most of the UK's national press and lectured at home and abroad. She is the author of nine books and has made two television series for Channel 4.