Britain at bay, 1938-1941 : the epic story of the Second World War / Alan Allport.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part One : The British Way and Purpose ; Shire Folk ; Ulster Kristallnacht ; A Different Kind of Nation ; The School of Empire -- Part Two : Umbrella Man ; Guilty Man ; The Bones of a British Grenadier ; The Stupidest Thing That Has Ever Been Done ; To Make Gentle the Life of the World ; The Sharpening of the Claws -- Part Three : Companions in Misfortune ; The Other Dunkirk ; Class War ; Bras-Dessus, Bras-Dessous ; In the Name of God ; A Certain Eventuality -- Part Four : And Only England Stands ; Lunatic Relief ; All Our Past Proclaims Our Future ; Margins ; The Scouring of the Shire Folk -- Part Five : 'A New and Most Bitter Phase of the War' ; American Lebensraum ; Shapeless, Measureless Peril ; The Carotid Artery of Empire ; Taking the Gloves Off ; March on to Better Days.

In the bleak first half of the Second World War, Britain stood alone against the Axis forces. Isolated and outmanoeuvred, it seemed as though she might fall at any moment. Only an extraordinary effort of courage - by ordinary men and women - held the line. 0The Second World War is the defining experience of modern British history, a new Iliad for our own times. But, as Alan Allport reveals in this, the first part of a major new two-volume history, the real story was often very different from the myth that followed it. From the subtle moral calculus of appeasement to the febrile dusts of the Western Desert, Allport interrogates every aspect of the conflict - and exposes its echoes in our own age.0Challenging orthodoxy and casting fresh light on famous events from Dunkirk to the Blitz, this is the real story of a clash between civilisations that remade the world in its image.