Based on the stories of thirteen children and adults, Churchill's Childrentells the often moving story of the evacuation of schoolchildren in Britain during the Second World War. John Welshman skilfully captures the experience of evacuation and along the way addresses some of the fundamental questions it raised, such as how it affected the relationships between children and their parents and how children felt on returning home. The book looks at the role of the many adults involved too - the officials in charge of billeting, the teachers, and the civil servants - and goes on to address the significant impact that evacuation had on shaping attitudes in the post-war world, on everything from reconstruction and state intervention to poverty, social class, and the welfare state.

Author Biography

John Welshman is the author or editor of five books on twentieth-century British social history and has held posts at the Universities of Leicester, Oxford, and York. He is currently Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Lancaster University. He became interested in the evacuation as a postgraduate student, because the sources were so interesting and lively. He has since become an authority on evacuation, with articles in Twentieth Century British History, the Historical Journal, and the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies.