Wartime - Tapa dura

Gathered from an impressive array of sources, these rich and varied voices tell of blackout, of digging for victory and the arrival of the gum-chewing GIs. There is sadness, sacrifice, love and laughter, which together paint a comprehensive and sensitive portrait of what is was to live in a nation at war. (Mail on Sunday)

Danger, courage, deprivation, exhaustion, fear, humour and that old enemy 'boredom' were endured for six years. This exhilarating book is the voice of these people. (Despatches)

Juliet Gardiner's 'Wartime' provides a marvellously rich, and often entertaining, recreation of life on the Home Front, 1939-45, drawing on an enormous range of oral testimony and memoir. (The Scotsman)

From lost loves to crabby children to the sorrow of receiving the worst possible news, this is a remarkably personal picture of wartime life at home. (The Good Book Guide)

Irresistably unputdownable (Scotland On Sunday (Angus Calder))

humorous and deeply moving (Despatches)

In a book replete with treasures, everyone will find a special jewel. (The Times Literary Supplement (David Stafford))

Juliet Gardiner's book is ...wonderfully readable (BBC History Magazine)

after the torrents of film and forests of print devoted to her subject over the last four decades, it is exhilarating that Gardiner finds so many under-described aspects of the Home Front to document through her fresh witnesses. (BBC History Magazine)

utterly gripping (The Spectator)

Half the British Army never left Britain during the Second World War and became, with the civilian population, the Home Front. In WARTIME the danger, courage, deprivation, exhaustion, fear, humour and, sometimes, boredom that the population endured for six years is vividly brought to life through the voices of those who lived through them. From the vituperative and funny diary of a Sheffield housewife through the letters of an artist killed at Monte Cassino to the experiences of four Liverpool children and their hostile mother billeted on a Cheshire family, the everyday hardship, frustration and sadness of the war vibrate off the page. Many of these stories have not been told before; many of the letters and diaries have never been published. Juliet Gardiner has had access to a staggering wealth of rich, new material which covers all aspects of the conflict from conscription, rationing, propaganda and censorship to the plight of separated families, lack of money, entertainment and victory. This is a truly authoritative, comprehensive and involving perspective of the war years at home.