How do children cope when their world is transformed by war? This book draws on memory narratives to construct an historical anthropology of childhood in Second World Britain, focusing on objects and spaces such as gas masks, air raid shelters and bombed-out buildings. In their struggles to cope with the fears and upheavals of wartime, with families divided and familiar landscapes lost or transformed, children reimagined and reshaped these material traces of conflict into toys, treasures and playgrounds. This study of the material worlds of wartime childhood offers a unique viewpoint into an extraordinary period in history with powerful resonances across global conflicts into the present day.
List of figures
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Gas masks
Chapter 2: Collecting shrapnel
Chapter 3: Air Raid Shelters
Chapter 4: Bombsites
Chapter 5: Aircraft down to earth
Conclusion
Bibliography
List of BBC WW2 Peoples War sources
Index
Gabriel Moshenska is Associate Professor in Public Archaeology at University College London, UK.
