The People's War in Concrete and Stone. Death and the Negotiation of Collective Identity in Second World War Britain.

At the heart of the 'people's war' was the changed relationship between individual and state. In return for participation in the collective of the wartime nation, the British state promised a new, more egalitarian post-war future. This article examines the ways in which people negotiated with the wartime collective in the most intimate of experiences: the death, burial and commemoration of loved ones killed during the conflict. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including Mass Observation, Commonwealth War Graves Commission papers, Parliamentary Debates, newspapers and the papers of the War Memorials Advisory Committee, it argues that tracing the reach and limitations of political ideas and collective identities through intimate and emotional histories offers new avenues for understanding the Second World War.