Daniel Todman is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London. He was named Times Young Academic Author of the Year in 2005 for The Great War: Myth and Memory. He previously taught in the Department of War Studies at the Royal Military Academy and was the co-editor of Lord Alanbrooke's bestselling War Diaries.
This is an energetic, ambitious, provocative work by a young historian of notable gifts, which deserves a wide readership -- Max Hastings The Sunday Times A gifted historian...he tells the big story well but also illustrates his themes with many small stories and appealing anecdotes. -- Peter Clarke Financial Times Todman explores every aspect of the British experience of the war...rich in telling detail and reliant on the records kept by a host of ordinary Britons as they came to terms with the events going on around them...what ordinary people thought about the time they were living through provides a texture and depth that older wartime narratives have often lacked. -- Richard Overy Literary Review [Dan Todman] has succeeded in creating something that adds to our perception of what happened during this critical period...It is a compliment to Todman that time and again in reading his book I found myself thinking that I wanted to know more about this or that aspect. -- David Aaronovitch The Times The first volume of Dan Todman's new history of Britain and the Second World War is a tour de force. Taking the story up to the end of 1941, Todman provides us with a judicious guide to the road to war and its catastrophic first phase, offering in addition a shrewd portrait of Churchill which is worth the price of the book alone. Total history at its best. -- Jay Winter, Yale University Bold and breathtaking... I have never read a more daringly panoramic survey of the period...Todman has taken on a mammoth task but, at half-time, he shows every sign of completing it triumphantly. -- Jonathan Wright Herald Scotland