Narrating Britain’s War: A Four Nations and More Approach to the People’s War

Since 1940, memories of the Second World War have been central to understandings of British national identity. During the war itself, there was a concerted effort by the state to produce an unproblematic account of the war as one of Britain standing alone in adversity. At the centre of the development of this war story was Winston Churchill. Elements of the war considered to be in the spirit of ‘Britishness’ were deliberately maintained into the post-war period by national consensus, and features of this story, such as Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, became the accepted version of the war experience. This essay explores wartime and post-war construction of the war myth and its historiographical discussion. It examines the continuing engagement of British society with the Second World War through commemoration and memorialisation. The essay considers the complexities of the public history of the Second World War by taking a ‘four nations and more’ approach suggesting that the ‘Churchillian paradigm’ masks the assertion of local, regional and national identities through commemoration of the diverse experiences of war across the United Kingdom.