Our Longest Days

A People’s History of the Second World War

Edited by Sandra Koa Wing

ISBN 1846880883

March 2008

Price £8.99

Paperback, 320 pp.

Buy this book at amazon.co.uk

View quote sheet

Subject: History

For six years the people of Britain endured bombs and the threat of invasion, and more than 140,000 civilians were killed or seriously wounded. Men and women were called to serve in the armed forces in record numbers, and everyone experienced air raids and rationing. In these terrible times, volunteers of almost every age, class and occupation wrote diaries for the “Mass Observation” project, which was set up in the 1930s to collect the voices of ordinary men and women.

Using many diaries that have never been published before, this book tells the story of the war – the military conflict, and, mainly, life on the home front – through these voices. Through it all, people carry on living their lives, falling in love, longing for a good meal, complaining about office colleagues or mourning allotment potatoes destroyed by a bomb.

‘A unique attempt to tell the chronological history of the war, event by event, through the eyes of the diarists...As a history to dip in and out of, it is faultless and should be recommended reading for everyone. This is an authentic living, breathing history, almost cinematic in its immediacy.’
— The Observer

‘...a compelling collection of real wartime diaries…a waking dream of blown-out-windows drama and real domesticity. ’
— Good Housekeeping