Book description
Permission to speak, Sah!
In the aftermath of the Second World War, over two million men were
conscripted to serve in Britain's armed services. Some were sent
abroad and watched their friends die in combat. Others remained in
barracks and painted coal white. But despite delivering such varied
experiences, National Service helped to shape the outlook of an entire
generation of young British males.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the end of National Service,
Historian Dr Colin Shindler has interviewed a wide range of
ex-conscripts, from all backgrounds, across all ranks, and spanning
the entire fourteen years that peacetime conscription lasted, and
captured their memories in this engrossing book. From them, we
experience the tension of a postwar Berlin surrounded by Russians, the
exotic heat and colour of Tripoli in 1948, the brief but intense
flashpoint of the Suez Crisis, and the fear of the Mau Mau uprising in
Kenya. But we also hear about the other end of the scale, the
conscripts who didn't make it outside the confines of their barracks,
or in one case, beyond his home town.
Through these conversations we learn as much about the changing
attitudes of servicemen as war became more of a distant memory as we
do about the varied nature of their experiences. We see, too, the
changing face of British society across these pivotal years, which
span everything from the coronation of Elizabeth II, to the birth of
rock 'n' roll, to the beginning of the end of the Empire. The stories
within these pages are fascinating. And they deserve to be told before
they are lost forever.
Colin Shindler is an author, broadcaster and Affiliated Lecturer
in History at Cambridge University.
For twenty years he was a Bafta award winning television writer and
producer being responsible for the series Lovejoy and the motion
picture Buster starring Phil Collins and Julie Walters for which he
wrote the screenplay.
In recent years he has written a series of books on British and
American social history and written and presented documentaries for
BBC Television and written plays for BBC Radio Four. He lectures in
British and American cultural history with an emphasis on the impact
of both sport and film on twentieth century society.
