The People's Victory

The People’s Victory is an intimate, and profoundly moving, encounter with ordinary lives in a moment of extraordinary change. Drawing on the unparalleled riches of the UK’s Mass Observation Archive, it shows us that wartime people were complex, surprising and thoughtful - in fact people quite like us. The book is authoritative, enlightening, and narratively gripping, as it takes us on a journey through the last days of war in the company of those who lived through it. * Professor Claire Langhamer, Director of the Institute of Historical Research *This remarkable book delves into perhaps the most meaningful day in 20th-century British history. Although redolent with the scent of bonfires and patterned with the crisscross of bunting, The People’s Victory does far more than just paint a picture of VE Day; it captures the emotional complexity of a moment that was both an end and a beginning, and draws on the wealth of material in the Mass Observation archive to understand how the nation was truly feeling. * Becky Brown, editor of Blitz Spirit *Drawing on the fabulous Mass Observation Archive, Noakes has written an entirely new social history of the Second World War. The People’s Victory is a moving and engaging account of ordinary people’s everyday experiences, and responses to, one of the most significant moments in twentieth-century British history. It is a compelling read. * Professor Emerita Penny Summerfield *Ambitious in its span and nuanced in its analysis, The People’s Victory offers a compelling portrait of a nation at war. Lucy Noakes has rescued from relative obscurity a rich and complex archive, one that lends insight into the hopes, dreams and fears of an embattled generation. This book is a tour de force and a major contribution to the way we remember war. * Bruce Scates, Professor of History, Australian National University *Lucy Noakes’s fascinating chronicle of VE Day, 8 May 1945, draws on the hundreds of contemporary accounts in the Mass Observation archive to create a vivid picture of the hopes, fears, and excitement of ordinary people across Britain at the moment the war in Europe ended. * Professor Alan Allport, award-winning author of Britain at Bay *

Lucy Noakes is the Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex, a Trustee of the Mass Observation Archive and the current President of the Royal Historical Society. She is a historian of twentieth-century Britain and an expert on the social and cultural history of the Second World War. Her publications include three single authored books - War and the British: National Identity and the Second World War, Women and the British Army 1907-1948 and Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain - and three edited collections.