I am a historian of the Second World War and the aim of this site is to enable others to access some of the research I have carried out over the past few years, and to encourage people to exchange ideas and views about a wide range of subjects relating to the conflict. On this site you will find an oral history archive with transcriptions of many of the interviews I have conducted with veterans of the war from many different countries, and there are also blogs, comment pieces, book reviews, suggested reading, and also contributions from other leading historians in this field.
I hope you find it interesting.

James Holland


Blog, Talking point - Wednesday 5th September 2007

A Strange Day Out

WAR AND PEACE SHOW
I went to this year’s War & Peace Show at Beltring in Kent with a friend of mine, Peter Caddick-Adams, an academic from the Defence Academy at Shrivenham and also, incidentally, one of the best battlefield tour guides in the business.  He had been some years before, but not since, but for me, it was the first time to experience this fascinating but bizarre event.
For those not in the know, it is like a militaria Glastonbury Festival, with huge fields covered with stalls and stands selling every conceivable item of Second World War equipment, and then, away in a further field, a large camp for re-enactors.  The name is, of course, a misnomer – it’s war, not peace, that brings hundreds of thousands through the gates.  It’s military porn at its most unsubtle. Read more…

Posted by James Holland
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