London At War. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.London At War

This is the story of London at war from 1939 to 1945, or perhaps of Londoners at war - for Philip Ziegler, best known as a biographer, is above all fascinated by the people who found their lives so suddenly and violently transformed: the querulous, tiresome, yet strangely gallant housewife from West Hampstead; the turbulent, left-wing, retired schoolmaster from Walthamstow, always standing up to the authorities; the odiously snobbish middle-class woman from Kensington, sneering at the 'scum' who took shelter in the Underground; the typist from Fulham; the plumber from Woolwich. It was their war every bit as much as it was Churchill's or the King's, and this is their story.
Through a wealth of interviews and unpublished letters and diaries, as well as innumerable books and newspapers, the author has built up a dazzling portrait of an entire population under siege. There were cowards, there were criminals, there were incompetents, but what emerges from these pages is above all a record - in story after story - of astonishing patience, dignity and humour. 'I hope,' Ziegler writes, 'we will never have to endure again what they went through between 1939 and 1945. I hope, if we did, that we would conduct ourselves as well.'

Philip Ziegler was born in 1929 and educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, where he gained first-class honours in Jurisprudence. He then joined the Diplomatic Service and served in Tientiane, Paris, Pretoria and Bogatá before resigning to join the publishers William Collins, where he was editorial director for more than fifteen years. His books have included biographies of William IV, Melbourne, Lady Diana Cooper, Mountbatten and Edward VIII. He lives in London.