Alan Allport teaches history at Syracuse University in New York State. He is writing a social history of the British army from 1939 to 1945.
In August 1937, Les Tebbutt, a 17-year-old boy from Northampton, attended a Boys’ Brigade summer camp in Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast. One night, as he and his friends made their way back through the camp after a trip to Butlin’s Pleasure Fair and a fish and chip supper, he noticed a ‘nice girl’ watching him from one of the caravans. After a few days of shy...
Whatever sort of welcome the former Eighth Army driver Maurice Merritt was hoping for when he walked out of the Second World War and in through his front door, it probably wasn’t the note...
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