Men, Masculinities and Male Culture in the Second World War

Linsey Robb is Lecturer in History at Northumbria University, UK, and is a social and cultural historian specialising in the study of gender in the Second World War. Key publications include Men at Work (Palgrave, 2015), and Men in Reserve (2017), co-authored with Juliette Pattinson and Arthur McIvor. She is currently researching British conscientious objection during the Second World War. Juliette Pattinson is Reader at the University of Kent, UK, and a gender historian specialising in the Second World War. Key publications include Behind Enemy Lines (2007), Men in Reserve (2017)  and three co-edited collections: Fighting for Britain? (2015), British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (2014) and War in a Twilight World (2010).

Chapter 1. ‘Masculinities at war: men and male culture in the Second World War’; Linsey Robb and Juliette Pattinson.- Part One: The ‘Soldier Hero’.- Chapter 2. ‘Fantasies of the “soldier hero”, frustrations of the Jedburghs'; Juliette Pattinson.- Chapter 3. ‘“Man, lunatic or corpse”: fear, wounding and death in the British Army, 1939-45’; Emma Newlands.- Chapter 4. ‘“Pinky Smith looks gorgeous!”: female impersonators and male bonding in prisoner of war camps for British servicemen in Europe’; Clare Makepeace.- Chapter 5. ‘Becoming “A Man” during the Battle of Britain: combat, masculinity and rites of passage in the memoirs of “The Few”’; Frances Houghton.- Part Two: The Home Front Man.- Chapter 6. ‘Rebuilding “real men”: work and working class male civilian bodies in wartime’; Arthur McIvor.- Chapter 7. ‘“Bright chaps for hush-hush jobs”: masculinity, class and civilians in uniform at Bletchley Park’; Chris Smith.- Chapter 8. ‘“The Cushy Number”: civilian men in British post-war representations of the Second World War’; Linsey Robb.- Chapter 9. ‘Commemorating invisible men: reserved occupations in bronze and stone’; Corinna Peniston-Bird.- Index.