National Service: A Generation in Uniform 1945-1963

National Service: A Generation in Uniform 1945-1963

by Richard Vinen
National Service: A Generation in Uniform 1945-1963

National Service: A Generation in Uniform 1945-1963

by Richard Vinen

eBook

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Overview

SUNDAY TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR and FINANCIAL TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014

WINNER OF THE TEMPLER MEDAL AND THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE

Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller

Richard Vinen's new book is a serious - if often very entertaining - attempt to get to grips with the reality of National Service, an extraordinary institution which now seems as remote as the British Empire itself. With great sympathy and curiosity, Vinen unpicks the myths of the two 'gap years', which all British men who came of age between 1945 and the early 1960s had to fill with National Service. Millions of teenagers were thrown together and under often brutal conditions taught to obey orders and to fight. The luck of the draw might result in two years of boredom in some dilapidated British barracks, but it could also mean being thrown into a dangerous combat mission in a remote part of the world.

By any measure National Service had a huge impact on the nature of British society, and yet it has been remarkably little written about. As the military's needs wound down and Britain ceased to be a great power, National Service came to be seen as just an embarrassment, and its culture of rank and discipline something which many British people were by the 1960s running away from. But without a proper understanding of National Service the story of post-war Britain barely makes sense. Richard Vinen provides that missing book. It will be fascinating to those who endured or even enjoyed their time in uniform, but also to anyone wishing to understand the unique nature of post-war Britain.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781846143885
Publisher: Penguin UK
Publication date: 08/28/2014
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 300
File size: 21 MB
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About the Author

Richard Vinen is the author of the highly-praised A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation (published by Penguin) and Thatcher's Britain. He is Professor of History at King's College, London.
Richard Vinen is Professor of History at King's College, London and the author of a number of major books. He won the Wolfson Prize for History for National Service (2014).
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