This book opens with one of the greatest disasters in British military history - the fall of Singapore in February 1942. Unlike in the aftermath of Dunkirk, there was here simply no redeeming narrative available - Britain had been totally defeated by a far smaller Japanese force in her grandly proclaimed, invincible Asian 'fortress'.
The unique skill of Daniel Todman's epic history of the war lies in its never losing sight of the inter-connectedness of the British experience. The agony of Singapore, for example, is seen through the eyes of its inhabitants, of its defenders, of Churchill's Cabinet and of ordinary people at home. Each stage of the war, from the nadir of early 1942 to the great series of victories in 1944-5 and on to Indian independence, is described both as it was understood at the time and in the light of the very latest historical research.
Todman dramatizes the dreadful uncertainties of Britain's position and the plight of families doomed to spend year after year struggling with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and, above all, the absence of millions of family members scattered around the country and the world.
Britain's War is a triumph of narrative, empathy and research, as gripping in its handling of individual witnesses to the war as of the gigantic military, social, technological and economic forces that swept the conflict along. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped our country.
