The history of the First World War continues to attract enormous interest. However, most attention remains concentrated on combatants, creating a misleading picture of wartime Britain: one might be forgiven for assuming that by 1918, the country had become virtually denuded of civilian men and particularly of middle-class men who – or so it seems – volunteered en masse in the early months of war. In fact, the majority of middle-class (and other) men did not enlist, but we still know little about their wartime experiences. Civvies thus takes a different approach to the history of the war and focuses on those middle-class English men who did not join up, not because of moral objections to war, but for other (much more common) reasons, notably age, family responsibilities or physical unfitness. In particular, Civvies questions whether, if serviceman were the apex of manliness, were middle-class civilian men inevitably condemned to second-class, ‘unmanly’ status?

Defending Albion is the first published study of Britain's response to the threat of invasion from across the North Sea in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century. It examines the emergency schemes designed to confront an enemy landing and the problems associated with raising and maintaining the often derided Territorial Force. It also explores the long-neglected military and political difficulties posed by the spontaneous and largely unwanted appearance of the 'Dad's Army' of the Great War, the Volunteer Force.