Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War: 1938-1941
Alan Allport
Jul 2025 · Profile Audio · Narrated by James Langton
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21 hr 5 min
Unabridged
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WINNER OF THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN
A TIMES AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Britain's wartime story has been told many times, but never as cleverly as this.' Dominic Sandbrook
In the bleak first half of the Second World War, Britain stood alone against the Axis forces. Isolated and outmanoeuvred, it seemed as though she might fall at any moment. Only an extraordinary effort of courage - by ordinary men and women - held the line. The Second World War is the defining experience of modern British history, a new Iliad for our own times. But, as Alan Allport reveals in this, the first part of a major new two-volume history, the real story was often very different from the myth that followed it. From the subtle moral calculus of appeasement to the febrile dusts of the Western Desert, Allport interrogates every aspect of the conflict - and exposes its echoes in our own age.
Challenging orthodoxy and casting fresh light on famous events from Dunkirk to the Blitz, this is the real story of a clash between civilisations that remade the world in its Image.
A TIMES AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Britain's wartime story has been told many times, but never as cleverly as this.' Dominic Sandbrook
In the bleak first half of the Second World War, Britain stood alone against the Axis forces. Isolated and outmanoeuvred, it seemed as though she might fall at any moment. Only an extraordinary effort of courage - by ordinary men and women - held the line. The Second World War is the defining experience of modern British history, a new Iliad for our own times. But, as Alan Allport reveals in this, the first part of a major new two-volume history, the real story was often very different from the myth that followed it. From the subtle moral calculus of appeasement to the febrile dusts of the Western Desert, Allport interrogates every aspect of the conflict - and exposes its echoes in our own age.
Challenging orthodoxy and casting fresh light on famous events from Dunkirk to the Blitz, this is the real story of a clash between civilisations that remade the world in its Image.
About the author
Alan Allport is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Syracuse University. Born in Liverpool, he grew up listening to family stories of the Merseyside Blitz and the Battle of the Atlantic while building Airfix kits and reading comics. He attended Liverpool Polytechnic where he received an undergraduate degree in physics; afterwards he emigrated to the United States, where he began a second life as a historian. He is the author of two previous volumes of history, Browned Of and Bloody-Minded: The British Soldier Goes to War 1939-1945, described by the historian Andrew Roberts as 'Second World War history at its best', and Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War, which won the 2010 Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
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