In the Summer of 1940, after evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk and the Franco/German armistice which followed the fall of France, Britain stood alone against the armed might of Hitler's Germany, supported only by the forced of her dominions and inspired by little but the rhetoric of her newly-appointed Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.
It seemed inevitable at the time that Hitler's next move would be the invasion of Britain and Churchill was not slow to use this threat to unite the people of Britain behind him; for not a few people in influential circles in Britain then favoured a quick settlement with the Fuhrer.
Michael Glover's penetrating analysis of the mood of British people that summer, of the German ability to mount an amphibious invasion at the time and of Britain's ability to repel such an invasion shows how ill-founded the scare was, while explaining how well it served the British cause. Hitler, as he shows, had embarked upon a course to which there were only two outcomes - either of which was bound to lead to his ultimate downfall. But in the summer of 1940 the beleaguered inhabitants of Britain were in no mood or position to relax in the comfort of such historical hindsight. Unprepared they may have been, but as the author shows, they were unflinching, unbowed - and, ultimately, undefeated. This is, however, by no means a work of chauvinistic self-congratulations; it is rather a distinguished historian's assessment of the last great invasion scare the British Isles have endured since the Martello towers were built in 1805.
