The second volume of this excellent work of history considers the war not just as a military conflict but also reveals the social, political and cultural impacts to give a balanced and interesting view of those times. Where would historians of Britain be without the everyday recordings of the Mass Observation researchers? (Future historians of our own times might theoretically have much more material to work with given our constant outpourings on social media but that is inherently more ephemeral).
I think a major eye-opener for me was to understand just how early it was that the prevailing understanding became that the war would be over and that the allies would win. Rather than the “total war” that we have often been sold, in which every effort was focussed solely on the war effort (which probably wasn’t even true during the darkest days of 1940), there was a lot of thought and planning going in to what would be done after the war and how things would be different - at all levels, from the very domestic (like health care) to the realm of politics and international relations.
Daniel also tells a convincing story about the relative decline of Britain, and in particular how its grip on the empire would inevitably slip (something that Churchill never really understood, or at least accepted).
This was a great piece of work and deserves to be regarded as one of the key texts in the history of Britain in that period. It is authoritative, convincing and never for a moment dull!