Listening to Britain

Listening to Britain

Home Intelligence Reports on Britain's Finest Hour, May-September 1940

Summary

From May to September 1940, a period that saw some of the most dramatic events in British history - including the evacuation of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the opening stages of the Blitz - the Ministry of Information eavesdropped on the conversations of ordinary people in all parts of the United Kingdom and compiled secret daily reports on the state of popular morale.

Reviews

  • The historical value of this evidence is enormous
    Noel Malcolm, The Sunday Telegraph

About the authors

Paul Addison

Paul Addison teaches history at the University of Edinburgh and is a former visiting Fellow of All Soul's College, Oxford. He is the author of Now the War is Over, a social history of post-war Britain which accompanied an acclaimed BBC television series; and Churchill on the Home Front, described by David Cannadine in the Observer as 'the best one-volume study of Churchill yet available'.
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Jeremy A Crang

Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang work at the Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars at the University of Edinburgh. They are the editors of The Burning Blue (Pimlico, 2000) and Firestorm (Pimlico, 2006), collections of essays on the Battle of Britain and the Allied bombing of Dresden respectively.
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