Contesting home defence

Men, women and the Home Guard in the Second World War

By (author) Penny Summerfield, Corinna Peniston-Bird

Publication date:

31 March 2007

Length of book:

328 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9780719062018

Contesting home defence is a new history of the Home Guard, a novel national defence force of the Second World War composed of civilians who served as part-time soldiers: it questions accounts of the force and the war, which have seen them as symbols of national unity.

It scrutinises the Home Guard’s reputation and explores whether this ‘people’s army’ was a site of social cohesion or of dissension by assessing the competing claims made for it at the time. It then examines the way it was represented during the war and has been since, notably in Dad’s Army, and discusses the memories of men and women who served in it.

The book makes a significant and original contribution to debates concerning the British home front and introduces fresh ways of understanding the Second World War.