eBook

Nine Wartime Lives

Hinton, James

2010,2011

Overview

This book provides a fascinating re-evaluation of the social history of the Second World War and the 20th century making of the modern self. Using the wartime diaries of nine individuals, the book illuminates the impact of war on attitudes to citizenship, the changing relationships between men and women, and the search for meaning in a wartime context of limitless violence. The diaries from which this book is derived were written by some of the unusually self-reflective and public-spirited people who agreed to write intimate journals about their daily activity for the social research organisation, Mass Observation. Each in their way is vivid, interesting and surprising. One of the nine diarists discussed is Nella Last, whose published diaries have been a source of delight and fascination for thousands of readers. A central insight underpins the book: in seeking to make the best of our own lives, each of us makes selective use of the resources of our shared culture in a unique way; in so doing, we contribute, however modestly, to molecular processes of historical change. The book resists nostalgic contrasts between the presumed dutiful citizenship of wartime Britain and contemporary anti-social individualism, pointing instead to longer-run processes of change, rooted as much in struggles for personal autonomy in the private sphere, as in the politics of active citizenship in public life.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press,Oxford University Press, Incorporated
• Subject: Autonomy / Autonomy (Psychology) / Biography / British History / Diary / Great Britain / Identity / Life stories / Modern History (1700 to 1945) / Observation / Psychological aspects / Second World War / Self / Social and Cultural History / Social aspects / Social conditions / Social history / United Kingdom / Women / World War Two / World War, 1939-1945
• ISBN: 0199574669, 9780199574667