Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War

(Hardback)

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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 Guards reputation and explores whether this peoples 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 Dads 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.

Author Bio

Penny Summerfield is Professor of Modern History at the University of Manchester. Corinna Peniston-Bird is Lecturer in History at the University of Lancaster