1939-1945

Under Fire: Essex and the Second World War 1939-1945, Paul Rusiecki, University of Hertfordshire Press, 2015, 320p, £18-99. ISBN 978-1-909291-28-7

Paul Rusiecki has explored what happened to Essex during the Second World War in a remarkable manner. This book is in many ways more about the experience of the people who lived in Essex as it is about the conduct of the war itself.

With Essex geographically on the front line of defence and adjacent to the River Thames, it would have been easy just to examine the role and experience of the County from a strategic perspective. Instead in exploring a number of themes, Paul Rusiecki also emphasises for us that, whatever its strategic location, Essex continued to be an important and essential part of the national agricultural output; and he also helps us to recognise that there are different ways to identify Essex as a geographical entity. Obviously there is an open agricultural area with its important market towns but, in addition to its defensive role, many people who identified as being from Essex lived, as they still do, in the expanding conurbation to the east of London. So Essex is a region of complexities.

This book is strongly focussed on how the varying populations, and age groups, coped with the challenges of war. What he does extremely well is to reveal to us how the people of Essex experienced, and reacted to, war. Two examples will reflect their behaviours. The famous Maldon By-election of 1942 resulted in the Independent Tom Driberg being elected against the huge electoral machine mounted by Churchill's Coalition Conservatives, a sign of local determination. Equally, in chapter 5, the manner in which local opinion shifted after Soviet Russia joined the Allies in 1941 is also explored at the important micro level.

What we are offered is an insight into the Essex society of those critical war years but those of us whose heritage lies elsewhere can use this book as a very valuable template to pursue our own investigations into our own areas of choice.