This book forms part 3 of Simon Heffer’s ambitious 4 volume history of the UK between the start of the Victorian era in the 1830s to the outbreak of WWII in 1939. It covers the 4 years of WWI from 1914 to 1918. The other 3 volumes all cover much longer periods: High Minds, over 40 years (1830s to 1880), The Age of Decadence, 34 years (1880 to 1914), and Sing As We Go, 20 years (1919 to 1939). It’s the first of this series I’ve read, but I’m assuming that it has a rather different character than the others due to its condensed time period. It was first published in 2019. I first came across the book and Simon Heffer when he spoke at Lewes Speaker’s festival in January ‘22. He’s a good speaker and it was an excellent talk - he spent most of it excoriating Lloyd George, who he compared to Boris Johnson, much to the audience’s amusement. Afterwards I had a brief chat with him and purchased a paperback copy which he was kind enough to sign. I later exchanged it for a hardback. There’s nothing less ergonomic than attempting to read a 800 page paperback. I realise I’ve become quite a book snob and always prefer hardbacks, and even better, Folio editions if at all possible. In the meantime I’ve also bought the rest of the series, all in hardback of course. They sit on my bookshelf next my complete David Kynaston awaiting my attention. I expect I’ll tackle Sing As We Go next.

Heffer makes clear in his introduction that this is not a military history. He avoids details of battles and campaigns beyond that necessary to inform events back in the UK. This is purely a domestic history of WWI. Apparently the first serious attempt by any historian, which is an oversight. His central thesis is that the war fundamentally changed the character of the UK during the course of its four years; from the liberal free-trading laissez-faire and hugely inequitable country of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, to an almost socialist economy, largely planned and managed by the government, and with unionised labour and women’s equality foremost in the government’s concerns. The level of taxation, and government debt expanded at an unprecedented rate. Most industries were directed and regulated, and profits were subjected to “excess profit tax”. During the war huge numbers of women entered the workforce at the encouragement of the authorities as the male population was sent to slaughter in the trenches. Many refused to return to domesticity and domestic service when peace returned. Their demand for the vote was by then impossible to ignore. Even Asquith, who’d been an ardent anti-suffragette pre-war was converted to the cause. The dislocation of so many families and relationships lead to a breakdown in the rigid moral framework of the Victorian era, and a far more open discussion of sex, not least because of the huge increase in sexually transmitted diseases brought home from France by the troops.

An ongoing sub-plot of the book is the dramatic events in Ireland leading up to the Easter Rising of 1916. The British government’s heavy handed and badly managed response, especially the execution of many of the insurrectionists, caused a lasting resentment and the end of any possibility of a constitutional settlement. The government just about managed to keep a lid on the simmering resentment until the end of the war, notably by refusing to extend conscription to Ireland, but almost as soon as the guns in France fell silent, the Irish war of independence flared up. The whole thing reads as thoroughly damning indictment of British rule.

The narrative runs in a mostly chronological order with asides for discussion of particular themes. He’s very good on the ongoing industrial unrest, despite the dire emergency the country found itself in. The miners of South Wales and the ship building industry of the Clyde were especially notable for their constant strikes. The government found it easiest just to give in to the striker’s demands, which no doubt egged them on. Also covered are the challenges of health, education, and housing, which were all radically transformed during the war. The need to care for huge numbers of wounded soldiers did much to create a kind of proto-NHS and introduced healthcare as a central government concern for the first time.

The core of the book is the soap opera at the centre of government. Heffer seems to enjoy this the most, lavishing considerable detail on the personalities, foibles, and peccadillos of the leading actors. There’s lots of detail on the machiavellian manoeuvring to oust Asquith in 1916. It seems that despite being a man of principle, he could never adjust to the urgencies of the war, and was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task he was given. In the end he was ousted by the scheming lying populist Lloyd George, who at least had the dynamism necessary to reorientate the country to total war. Other notable characters in the story are newspaper proprietor Nothcliffe, owner of The Times, who at first was an ally of LG, but quickly turned to an antagonist. Churchill features initially as a blundering egotistical irresponsible adventurer, but by the close has become a relatively level headed minister of munitions. He did at least have direct experience of fighting in the trenches for a short period. Of the soldiers, Haig appears as an over optimistic butcher, failing repeatedly to learn the lesson that throwing soldiers at machine guns, barbed wire, and high explosive artillery was not tactics but mere slaughter. He’s only somewhat redeemed by his obvious concern for the soldiers’ welfare as they demobbed after the armistice. Throughout the story is of unrelenting manpower shortage. There simply weren’t enough men in the country to both man a huge army and the industry necessary to support it. Also quite notable was that throughout the war the Royal Navy, still by far the largest in the world, mostly languished at Scarpa Flow soaking up a huge number of highly trained men.

Simon Heffer is a very good writer - notable that history books by journalists are usually a more enjoyable read than those by academics; Max Hastings is another good example. The story hums along nicely; It never felt like a slog despite its 825 pages. If I have any complaint it’s that he possibly spends too much time and detail on the minute-by-minute intrigue at the centre of government and could have given more space to the lives of ordinary people, better to illustrate how they adjusted to life during the war. The book makes an excellent companion to Nick Lloyd’s Western Front, Lloyd’s enormous military history of the war. Having read that, as well several personal memoirs of war, I now feel that I know something about the period after being mostly ignorant of it at the start of the year. I’ve long been interested in WWII and have read countless history books and memoirs, but knowing something of WWI puts so much of what happened 20 years later in perspective. Knowing that it took two years of fierce argument before conscription and rationing were introduced in WWI, makes the rationale for their immediate introduction in WWII clear. Total war was a well worn playbook, they knew exactly what needed to happen. It boggles the mind to imagine what it must have been like to face a second European conflagration only 20 years on. It’s as if a massive war had only just finished in 2005, and now we were preparing for a second one. How could anything but despair be the reaction?