Parties at War Political Organization in Second World War Britain
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Biographical note
After growing up in the North-East Derbyshire town of Dronfield, Andrew Thorpe took first class honours in Medieval and Modern History at the University of Birmingham in 1983. He then researched his PhD on 'The British general election of 1931' at the University of Sheffield under the supervision of Dr John Stevenson. He was appointed Lecturer in History at the University of Exeter in 1987, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1996. In 2002 he was appointed Professor of Modern British History at the age of 40. He was Head of Exeter's History Department between 2004 and 2007. He is the author of numerous books, articles and chapters on aspects of British political history in the twentieth century, and was one of the first British scholars to make use of the Moscow archives of the British Communist party when they were opened up in the early 1990s. That same commitment to using lesser-known or under-used sources was one of the considerations that led him to write Parties at War.This book is a detailed study of the role of British Political parties during the Second World War ... Andrew Thorpe has written a major comparative study of wartime politics and party organisation. His work deserves to be read not only by students of British Politics but also by a wider audience of historians, sociologists and political scientists
Paolo Morisi, Political Studies Review
Parties at War should be indispensible reading for anyone interested in the politics of the Second World War. The book benefits from some heroic research in local and regional archives that allowed Thorpe to gain an unrivalled insight into party activity at the grass roots.
Steven Fielding, 20th Century British History
...a fascinating book...
Keith Simpson, Total Politics
replete with good scholarship and informed by well-earned expertise.
Duncan Tanner, English Historical Review