Second World War – Biography
The award-winning Fighting the People’s War is an unprecedented, panoramic history of the ‘citizen armies’ of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and South Africa, the core components of the British and Commonwealth armies in the Second World War. Dr Jonathan Fennell has drawn on new sources to reveal the true wartime experience of the ordinary rank and file; he challenges our understanding of the war and of the relationship between conflict and socio-political change more generally. 

In conversation with Professor Sir Hew Strachan, Jonathan will discuss the way in which fractures on the home front had profound implications for the performance of the British and Commonwealth armies. They will interrogate soldiers’ political beliefs, many of which emerged as a consequence of their combat experience, and reflect on how those who fought shaped socio-political change and forged the post-war era.