A reissue of Patrick Wright's 1995 classic about the military takeover
of the village of Tyneham, with a new introduction taking in Brexit and
a new wave of British nationalism.
Shortly before Christmas in 1943, the British military announced they
were taking over a remote valley on the Dorset coast and turning it into
a firing range for tanks in preparation for D-Day. The residents of the
village of Tyneham loyally packed up their things and filed out of their
homes into temporary accommodation, yet Tyneham refused to die.
Although it was never returned to its pre-war occupants and owners,
Tyneham would persist through a long and extraordinary afterlife in the
English imagination. It was said that Churchill himself had promised
that the villagers would be able to return once the war was over, and
that the post-war Labour government was responsible for the betrayal of
that pledge. Both the accusation and the sense of grievance would
reverberate through many decades after that.
Back in print and with a brand new introduction, this book explores how
Tyneham came to be converted into a symbol of posthumous England, a
patriotic community betrayed by the alleged humiliations of post-war
national history. Both celebrated and reviled at the time of its first
publication in 1995, The Village that Died for England is
indispensable reading for anyone trying to understand where Brexit came
from -- and where it might be leading us.
