Few historical images are more powerful than those of wartime London. Having survived a constant barrage of German bombs, the city is remembered as an island of courage and defiance. These wartime images are still in use today to support a wide variety of political viewpoints. But how well do such descriptions match the memories of those who survived the blitz? Jean Freedman interviewed more than fifty people who remember London during the war, focusing on under-represented groups, including women, Jews, and working-class citizens. In addition she examined original propaganda, secret government documents, wartime diaries, and postwar memoirs. Of particular significance to Freedman were the contemporary music, theater, film, speeches, and radio drama used by the British government to shape public opinion and impart political messages. Such bits of everyday life are mentioned in virtually every civilian's experience of wartime London but their interpretations of them often clashed with their government's intentions. By exploring the differences between wartime documentation and postwar memory, oral and written artifacts, and the voices of the powerful and the obscure, Freedman illuminates the complex interactions between myth and history. She concludes that there are as many interpretations of what really happened during Britain's finest hour as there are people who remember it.
Emma Healey follows the success of her #1 internationally bestselling debut novel Elizabeth Is Missing, winner of the Costa First Novel Award, with this beautiful, thought-provoking, and psychologically complex tale that affirms her status ...
Whistling in the Dark: The Story of Fred Lowery, the Blind Whistler
She indulged herself in her secret, sweet fantasy: finding a strong man. A real man. Ingenious. With nerve. With color. ... the smothering feeling that she might never escape Val-te-se-stinko. She imagined steel jaws stretched back and ...
Miss Bertha, she had me call up Mr. Cooper to come over last week.” He is the man Mr. Gary Galecki picked out to make sure his mother's bills are paid. He also signs Ethel's paycheck that comes in the mail every Friday from his office ...
Daily meditations taken from the works of an acclaimed novelist, essayist, and preacher who has articulated what he sees with a freshness and clarity and energy that hails our stultified imaginations.
A spine-chilling ghost story with a thrilling mystery at its heart WINNER OF THE EXETER NOVEL PRIZE Alone in the world, Elspeth Swansome has taken the position of nanny to a family on the remote Scottish island of Skelthsea.
Examines the role of what the author calls identity contingencies in the lives of individuals and in society as a whole, focusing on stereotype threat, arguing that people who believe they may be judged based on a bad stereotype do not ...
"Fleeing her strict grandmother's home in 1963 Mississippi, 9-year-old Starla Claudelle becomes an unlikely companion to an African-American woman at whose side she learns harsh lessons about period segregation and family.
“David Gemmell tells a tale of very real adventure, the stuff of true epic fantasy.”—R.A. Salvatore, New York Times bestselling author Chaos and terror stalked the realm.
In this volume, by contrast, editor Don Carleton uses the original oral history dictated by Ross Sterling to Ed Kilman to present the former governor's life story in his own words.