The People's Victory by Lucy Noakes

The People's Victory by Lucy Noakes

'The VE Day book' Amol Rajan, Today, Radio 4

IN 1937, Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson created the social survey organisation Mass Observation to capture the thoughts, feelings and minutiae of individuals across the British Isles. At its height Mass Observation had 1,000 concurrent writers - stretching from Penzance to Aberdeen and including miners, academics and housewives - and collected over 1 million individual diary entries between 1937 and 1960.

In The People's Victory, historian Lucy Noakes mines the Mass Observation archive to present a groundbreaking history of how Britons at home celebrated and experienced the end of World War II. Alongside street celebrations and tea parties, we find bonfires and bell ringing, water fights and wagon rides, solitary and shared walks - and copious amounts of alcohol. However, as Noakes also reveals, not everyone felt like celebrating that May: many were still waiting for news of family members who had vanished in the fog of war, whilst thousands of British soldiers were still interned in the Far East.

By centring the voices, feelings and fears of the public at the heart of the People's War, Noakes also traces the hopes and changing attitudes of a nation in flux, revealing how the camaraderie and selflessness of wartime led to the birth of the welfare state.

An intimate, and profoundly moving, encounter with ordinary lives in a moment of extraordinary change Drawing on the unparalleled riches of the UK's Mass Observation Archive, it shows us that wartime people were complex, surprising and thoughtful - in fact people quite like us. The book is authoritative, enlightening, and narratively gripping. * Professor Claire Langhamer, Director of the Institute of Historical Research *
Remarkable... Although redolent with the scent of bonfires and patterned with the crisscross of bunting, The People's Victory does far more than just paint a picture of VE Day; it captures the emotional complexity of a moment that was both an end and a beginning. * Becky Brown, editor of Blitz Spirit *
Noakes has written an entirely new social history of the Second World War. A moving and engaging account of ordinary people's everyday experiences, and responses to, one of the most significant moments in twentieth-century British history. It is a compelling read. * Professor Emerita Penny Summerfield *
Ambitious in its span and nuanced in its analysis, The People's Victory offers a compelling portrait of a nation at war... This book is a tour de force and a major contribution to the way we remember war. * Bruce Scates, Professor of History, Australian National University *
Lucy Noakes's fascinating chronicle of VE Day, 8 May 1945, draws on the hundreds of contemporary accounts in the Mass Observation archive to create a vivid picture of the hopes, fears, and excitement of ordinary people across Britain at the moment the war in Europe ended. * Professor Alan Allport, award-winning author of Britain at Bay *

Lucy Noakes is the Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex, a Trustee of the Mass Observation Archive and the current President of the Royal Historical Society. She is a historian of twentieth-century Britain and an expert on the social and cultural history of the Second World War. Her publications include three single authored books - War and the British: National Identity and the Second World War, Women and the British Army 1907-1948 and Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain - and three edited collections.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781838955151
ISBN 10	1838955151
Title	The People's Victory
Author	Lucy Noakes
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Atlantic Books
Year published	2026-05-07
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.