the People’s war
Unheard Voices: Life on the Battlefront and at Home in World War II
In the early 2000s, the BBC launched its biggest oral history project, recording the lives and experiences of the ordinary people who lived through World War II. It amounted to 47,000 testimonies and over 400 dairies and letters, which have remained almost unexplored in the archives for twenty years-until now.
In The People’s War, John Willis reveals untold stories of everyday bravery, moments of terror, and tales of life-affirming community, that guide us through the years of World War II. From soldiers in North Africa and prisoners of war in East Asia, to evacuees in the British countryside and women in the factories. The People’s War is a truly ambitious journey through a devastating and pivotal period of our history, as you’ve never read before.
Follow the remarkable stories of ordinary individuals who lived, fought, grieved, loved and survived through the war.
‘The People's war is poignant, funny, and heartfelt all at once-the real record of what happened during the Second World War in the words of the ordinary people who lived through it. John Willis brilliantly draws their accounts together in a seamless emotional and factual framework.’
-Jane Corbin, BBC Panorama
‘So precise, so detailed, so graphic is this recounting that I know of no other journey in words or pictures that brings one close to what it must have been like. The People's War is by turns amazing and horrifying.’
-Peter McGhee, former Director of National Programmes, WGBH Boston
‘A wonderful book...Willis has unlocked the history of an entire generation and is to be commended.’
-Britain at War Magazine - Book of the Month, June 2025
‘A deeply moving social history...in no other book have I felt such a visceral sense of what it must have been like to have found oneself pulled into the turmoil of such a conflict.’
-Waterstones, Telford
Readings from A People’s War by Christine Kavanagh
Actor Christine was a member of the BBC Radio Drama Repertory Company and plays many roles in the Penguin Audiobook of The People's War. She recently starred in The Diplomat (Netflix), An Inspector Calls (national tour), and Murder on the Orient Express (China tour).
British soldier on Dunkirk Beach. (May 1940)
Schoolgirl Donna Farber writing about her last minute evacuation from the besieged city of Singapore and leaving her father behind. (February 1942)