How We Lived Then
  • Published: 1 August 2002
  • ISBN: 9780712668323
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $45.00

How We Lived Then

History of Everyday Life During the Second World War, A

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jul 2010
Tr. Paperback
1 Aug 2002
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'Minutely detailed, accurate, skilfully marshalled and engagingly written, it is quite the best social chronicle of the period I have read' Spectator

Although nearly 90% of the population of Great Britain remained civilians throughout the war, or for a large part of it, their story has so far largely gone untold. In contrast with the thousands of books on military operations, barely any have concerned themselves with the individual's experience. The problems of the ordinary family are barely ever mentioned - food rationing, clothes rationing, the black-out and air raids get little space, and everyday shortages almost none at all.

This book is an attempt to redress the balance; to tell the civilian's story largely through their own recollections and in their own words.
  • Published: 1 August 2002
  • ISBN: 9780712668323
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $45.00
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About the author

Norman Longmate

Norman Longmate was born in Berkshire, and educated at Christ's Hospital. After war service he read modern history at Worcester College, Oxford. He subsequently worked as a journalist in Fleet Street, as a producer of history programmes for the BBC, and for the BBC Secretariat. In 1981 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 1983 he left the BBC to become a full-time writer. He has written more than twenty books, mainly on the Second World War and on Victorian social history.

Also by Norman Longmate

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Praise for How We Lived Then

Mr Longmate has recruited an enormous volunteer army of home-front veterans who sent him their wartime recollections... He has brilliantly sifted and assembled the precious debris

Guardian

Much of it is extremely interesting; some of it is fascinatingly out-of-the-way; and all of it contributes to building up a true picture of everyday life in England from September 1939 to August 1945

Observer

A landmine of information covering every field of civilian life in wartime from the grandeurs of the blitz to the miseries of dried eggs and the six-inch bath

Cyril Connolly

Superbly detailed and illustrated... From stirrup pumps to Spam, Norman Longmate's marvellously comprehensive panorama misses nothing. Excellent

Sunday Telegraph

An immense and impressive assembly... Must surely remain an invaluable essay in the remembrance of things past

Times
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