I'm a pretty avid reader of a lot of what this book was about so it was interesting to read about the when, why and where many of these authors came from and what they were trying to do in their stories. Dudley Edwards divides the chapters into two parts, Part One "The School of War": Orwell v Richards: Children's fiction to 1940; Rations and Quislings; Evacuees and Gurus; Women and Fathers; and Officials and Genteel-men. Part two is "Lessons which May have been Learned": Gods Things and Others'; Identity, Authority and Imagination; Gender; Class; and Race. He takes a number of the popular writers of the time and looks at how they treat these issues, featured authors include: Enid Blyton; Elinor M Brent Dwyer, Richmal Crompton and Captain W E Johns. These were some of the authors he grew up with and I grew up with too. Many of them I am still fond of and there's a lot fo interesting points in the stories.

It's a deep look at this topic and I found myself reading it in small bites to try to absorb as much as possible. I'd like to read more of the stories and come back to it some other day. ( )