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SUNDAY TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR and FINANCIAL TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 WINNER OF THE TEMPLER MEDAL AND THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller Richard Vinen's new book is a serious - if often very entertaining - attempt to get to grips with the reality of National Service, an extraordinary institution which now seems as remote as the British Empire itself. With great sympathy and curiosity, Vinen unpicks the myths of the two 'gap years', which all British men who came of age between 1945 and the early 1960s had to fill with National Service. Millions of teenagers were thrown together and under often brutal conditions taught to obey orders and to fight. The luck of the dra...
More than 2 million men were conscripted to serve in Britain's armed forces during the period of National Service, which began after World War II and was phased out by 1963. Aged just 18, these individuals, many of whom had never left their hometowns before, were put in uniform to serve their nation and taken to some of the furthest reaches of Britain's crumbling empire. It was an experience that left a profound mark on the post-war generations. Using first-hand accounts and official documents, these remarkable times are described in this detailed, entertaining, and hugely informative account of the National Service years.
During the ten years from 1987 to 1997 that he was Director of the Royal National Theatre, Richard Eyre kept a diary - a record that disarmingly captured a life at the heart of British cultural and political affairs. The powerful and the famous inevitably strut and fret upon its pages, but National Service is also a moving personal journey, charted faithfully by a fiercely self-aware and frequently self-doubting individual. The job of grappling with a giant three-headed monster as complex as the Royal National Theatre is laid before us. So are good gossip, brilliant insights into personalities and relationships and a sense of the ridiculous, which Eyre is powerless to suppress. Like other consummate diarists such as Alan Clark and Kenneth Tynan, Richard Eyre has a voice and point of view that jolt the reader into fresh understanding - and are instantly compelling.
The story of one young man's National Service in the 1950's, and how he came to terms with two years compulsory soldiering and the experiences he endured or enjoyed. From basic infantry training in Yorkshire, to his time spent in Libya and Malta, Alan Brewin details his personal experiences of Army life and the various people he met along the way.
The experiences of a young soldier on the frontlines of the Rhodesian Bush War are vividly recounted in this personal memoir. In A Walk Against the Stream, Tony Ballinger tells of his eighteen months of compulsory service as a young national service officer in the Rhodesian army. Stationed in Victoria Falls, Rhodesia, he faced down enemy territory just across the Zambezi river in Zambia. Initially allocated to 4th platoon, 4 Independent company Rhodesia Regiment (RR) as a subaltern and later on as a 1st Lieutenant in support company 2RR, the story starts with the author’s training and deployment. The events that unfold contain interesting military encounters, including battles against the Zambian army and revolutionary guerillas. But Ballinger also explores the human side of his time in the service: his love of a country falling apart, the relationship he forms with a local woman; and how their love, hope and dreams are snatched away by unfolding events. This is a riveting personal tale, interspersed with dozens of the author’s personal photographs.
The foundation of the National Health Service on 5 July 1948 was a momentous development in the history of the United Kingdom. Issues of health care touch the lives of everyone, and the NHS has come to be regarded as the cornerstone of the welfare state and as a model for state-organisedhealth care systems elsewhere. Yet throughout its history, the Service has existed in an atmosphere of crisis. Charles Webster's political history is an entirely new and original examination of the NHS from its inception through to its management under the first term of the current Labourgovernment, providing the necessary framewrork for assessing its future as we enter the new millennium.
Albert Balmer was just one of the thousands upon thousands of men to be sent abroad on national service. But few if any of those 'peacetime conscripts' can have been blessed with his pin-sharp memory for detail. This memoir of two short but eventful years in the late 1950s is therefore one of the most vivid accounts yet published of the time when ordinary men stood alongside regular soldiers, facing the same dangers. It is also an important record of the British forces' role in Cyprus, an often-ignored and frequently misunderstood chapter of military history. Called up in 1957, Albert soon finds himself being sent from training camp to training camp within Britain, learning artillery skills ...
The story of a young man who was conscripted into the British Army as an Infantry Soldier and served for two years as part of National Service. A personal story about everyday army life, journeying over 28,000 miles. He includes life in the Essex Regiment, on board 3 troopships and falling in love with Hong Kong and even a spell of 'Jankers'.
This book analyzes the issues surrounding civilian national service policy from a fresh and original perspective. The author connects national service programs to the political theories of civic republicanism and communitarianism, assesses the practical consequences of these theories, and examines past youth service programs such as the CCC and Peace Corps to see if they are appropriate models or ideals for a national program. Gorham engages the issue of compulsory versus voluntary service and questions whether service tasks can instill a sense of "citizenship" in young people, as defenders of the program claim. Using the work of Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, Carole Pateman, and others, he suggests that national service, as presently planned, will not create the "citizen" so much as a post-industrial and gendered subject. In the concluding chapters, he presents an argument for a democratic national service and offers an alternative program for policymakers to consider.
Nearly 1.9 million U.S. troops have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since October 2001. Many service members and veterans face serious challenges in readjusting to normal life after returning home. This initial book presents findings on the most critical challenges, and lays out the blueprint for the second phase of the study to determine how best to meet the needs of returning troops and their families.