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    Our Land at War
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    Our Land at War
    Unavailable
    Our Land at War
    Audiobook13 hours

    Our Land at War

    Written by Duff Hart-Davis

    Narrated by Hugh Kermode

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    A rich account of the impact of the Second World War on the lives of people living in the farms and villages of Britain.

    On the outbreak of war, the countryside was invaded by service personnel and evacuee children by the thousand; land was taken arbitrarily for airfields, training grounds and firing ranges, and whole communities were evicted. Prisoner-of-war camps brought captured enemy soldiers to close quarters, and as horses gave way to tractors and combines farmers were burdened with aggressive new restrictions on what they could and could not grow. Land Girls and Lumber Jills worked in fields and forests. Food – or the lack of it – was a major preoccupation and rationing strictly enforced. And although rabbits were poached, apples scrumped and mushrooms gathered, there was still not enough to eat.

    Drawing from diaries, letters, books, official records and interviews, Duff Hart Davis revisits rural Britain to describe how ordinary people survived the war years. He tells of houses turned over to military use such as Bletchley and RAF Medmenham as well as those that became schools, notably Chatsworth in Derbyshire.

    Combining both hardship and farce, the book examines the profound changes war brought to Britain’s countryside: from the Home Guard, struggling with the provision of ludicrous equipment, to the role of the XII Corps Observation Unit. whose task was to enlarge rabbit warrens and badger setts into bunkers for harassing the enemy in the event of a German invasion; to the unexpected tenderness shown by many to German and Italian prisoners-of-war at work on the land. Fascinating, sad and at times hilarious, this warm-hearted book tells great stories – and casts new light on Britain during the war.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateMay 7, 2015
    ISBN9780008121365
    Unavailable
    Our Land at War
    Author

    Duff Hart-Davis

    Duff Hart-Davis joined the Sunday Telegraph on its inception in 1961 and later travelled extensively as a feature reporter in India, Nepal, Turkey, Caribbean, Norway, South Africa, Ascension Island. Shooting trips took him to Siberia, Poland and Hungary. Duff wrote the Country Matters column in the Independent 1986-2001. A distinguished biographer, naturalist and journalist, he is author of 17 non-fiction books on subjects ranging from Hitler's Olympics, the adventurer Peter Fleming, to a history of the mid-Atlantic island of Ascension. He has also had eight novels published. Duff was brought up on a farm in Oxfordshire. He did his National Service in Germany and read Classics at Oxford. He is married with two children and now lives on a farm in the Cotswolds.

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