Brothers John and Andrew Forbat had been happily living in England as patriotic British boys since 1936. When the Second World War broke out, however, the brothers found themselves evacuated to a disadvantaged part of Melksham in Wiltshire, cut off from home and family, and in straitened circumstances. Added to this, on Pearl Harbor Day 1941, Hungary, along with other countries, joined the Axis and the Forbat family became Enemy Aliens.Their many letters home throughout the war, with details of their schooling, bullying, friendships and constant pursuit of more pocket money, form a humorous and at times tragic testament to the hardships of war. Interspersed with diary entries made by the boys’ father back home in Blitz-ravaged London, and letters from Andrew when he was interned on the Isle of Man, Evacuee Boys is as full a record of war-torn Britain as one family could provide.

In June 1940, 17,000 people fled Guernsey to England, including 5,000 school children with their teachers and 500 mothers as 'helpers'. The Channel Islands were occupied on 30 June - the only part of British territory that was occupied by Nazi forces during the Second World War. Most evacuees were transported to smoky industrial towns in Northern England - an environment so very different to their rural island. For five years they made new lives in towns where the local accent was often confusing, but for most, the generosity shown to them was astounding. They received assistance from Canada and the USA - one Guernsey school was 'sponsored' by wealthy Americans such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Hollywood stars. From May 1945, the evacuees began to return home, although many decided to remain in England. Wartime bonds were forged between Guernsey and Northern England that were so strong, they still exist today.

This book, first published in 1985, is a scholarly examination of the of the British wartime evacuation of 4 million people, mostly children, from the cities to the countryside – and how it affected social life during the war years. It uses hitherto unpublished material from the collections of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board and the Mass Observation Archive.

A poignantly written and graphically described story of the pleasure and pain endured as an evacuee during World War Two. Like so many of his young friends and relatives, John Wright was required to leave the love and care of his parents in Middlesbrough at a very young age to escape the attention of the Luftwaffe and to be evacuated into the hands of a crowded and unloving home in Haxby, a quaint village north of the great city of York. The book eloquently describes his voyage of childhood discovery in the beautiful countryside coupled with the cruel attentions of a foster mother whose motivation was not to lavish love and support to her unfortunate foster children, but to hurt and belittle them. It is a bittersweet story of innocent interludes and mean realities for an evacuee child set amidst the horrors and melancholy of that devastating conflict.

In June 1940 Britain expected enemy invasion. Despite Churchill's determination to fight on the beaches, many parents made desperate efforts to send their children abroad to safety. Thousands left for America, Canada, Australia and other distant countries. In this revealing new book, Jessica Mann, herself a wartime evacuee, looks at the experiences of those who were sent away to a foreign land including their dangerous journeys across U-boat-ridden oceans, and asks how they coped with being away, and also how they found life back in the UK on their return. Drawing on extensive original research and memories of many former evacuees, including Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley Williams, Jessica Mann builds up a moving portrait of a lost generation.

Imagine a society that exists solely in cinema — this book explores exactly that. Using a half-century of films from the archival collection of the National Film Board, NFB Kids: Portrayals of Children by the National Film Board of Canada, 1939-1989 overcomes a long-standing impasse about what films may be credibly said to document. Here they document not “reality,” but social images preserved over time — the “NFB Society” — an evolving, cinematic representation of Canadian families, schools and communities. During the postwar era, this society-in-cinema underwent a profound change in its child rearing and schooling philosophies, embracing “modern” notions based upon principles espoused by the American mental hygiene movement. Soon after the introduction of these psychological principles into NFB homes in 1946 and schools in 1956, there was a subtle transformation in adult-child relations, which progressively, over time, narrowed the gulf of power between generations and diminished the socializing roles of the NFB parents and teachers. NFB Kids is a pioneering study within a new field of academic research — “cinema ethnography.” It adds to the growing body of knowledge about the function, and the considerable impact of, psychiatry and psychology in the post-war social reconstruction of Canadian society and social history. It will be of interest to academics over a broad spectrum of disciplines and to anyone thinking about the advancing arbitrary power of the cinematic state.