Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War

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Kit Kowol

Blue Jerusalem

British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War

Kit Kowol

$54.95

Hardback

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English

Oxford University Press
04 February 2025

History; British & Irish history; Second World War; Political parties

The untold story of how Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party envisioned Britain's post-war future

We think we know all there is to know about Britain's Second World War. We don't.

This radical re-interpretation of British history and British Conservatism between 1939 and 1945 reveals the bold, at times utopian, plans British Conservatives drew up for Britain and the post-war world.

From proposals for world government to a more united Empire via dreams of a new Christian elite and a move back-to-the-land, Blue Jerusalem reveals how Conservatives were every bit as imaginative and courageous as their Labour and left-wing opponents in their wartime plans for a post-war world.

Bringing these alternative visions of Britain's post-war future back to life, Blue Jerusalem restores politics to the centre of the story of Britain's war. It demonstrates how everything from the weapons Britain fought with, to the theatres in which the fighting took place and the allies Britain chose were the product of political decisions about the different futures Conservatives wanted to make.

Rejecting notions of a 'people's war' that continue to cloud how we think of World War II, it explores how the Tories used their control of the home and battle front to fight a deeply Conservative war and build the martial, imperial, and Christian nation of which many of a conservative disposition had long dreamed.

A study of political thinking as well as political manoeuvre, Blue Jerusalem goes beyond an examination of the usual suspects - such as Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain - to reveal a hitherto lost world of British Conservativism and a set of forgotten futures that continue to shape our world.

By: Kit Kowol
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 650g
ISBN: 9780198868491
ISBN 10: 0198868499
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 04 February 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Kit Kowol received his DPhil in Politics from Oxford University in 2014. He subsequently taught and researched at Teesside University, Christ Church (University of Oxford), and King's College London, where he was an Early Career Development Fellow in Modern British History. He now lives and works in Brisbane, Australia.

Reviews for Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War

A meticulously researched and strikingly fresh examination of the Conservative Party during the War...Kit Kowol does a valuable service in providing a history of a forgotten era of Conservative politics; but he also furnishes a deep history for the modern Conservative Party, rooted in that origin myth and foundational moment of modern Britain: the Second World War. * Francis Young, The Critic * Kowol's enormously stimulating analysis will make readers think about conservatism and the Second World War in a new way ... Unlike many books that are required reading, it is also fun - full of striking detail and amusingly malicious gossip. * Richard Vinen, Literary Review * The Anglo-American right today is afflicted by a lack of confidence that can make it seem incapable of addressing a growing global security crisis. Autocratic forces seek to overturn the world order built by the West after 1945. English-speaking countries sorely lack leaders with the imagination of figures like those Mr. Kowol profiles. It took a war and the leadership of a great man to inspire 20th-century British Tories to think afresh about their place in the world. One hopes todays conservatives can rediscover that hopeful and productive spirit before a similar crisis. * Michael Lucchese , Wall Street Journal * Kit Kowol's study of Conservatism during the war years is historical scholarship at its best: learned, balanced, fluent and provocative. He made me look at the politics of the 1940s in an entirely new light, overturning many of the things I'd taken for granted. A wonderful book; I enjoyed it enormously. * Dominic Sandbrook, historian and co-presenter of 'The Rest is History' podcast * A veritable abattoir of sacred cows, Blue Jerusalem takes everything you thought you knew about British domestic politics during the Second World War and turns it on its head. A generation of historians has marginalized or simply ignored Tory political thinking in those vital years, but Kit Kowol has discovered that it was suffused with genuine radicalism. This is revisionist history at its deeply-researched, well-written best, and of course could not be more timely. * Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny *