Mixing It: A Transnational History of Second World War Britain

A talk by Wendy Webster, author of Mixing It: Diversity in World War Two Britain.

During the Second World War, people arrived in Britain from all over the world as troops, war-workers, nurses, refugees, exiles and prisoners-of-war—chiefly from America, continental Europe and the British Empire. Wendy Webster's new book, Mixing It: Diversity in World War Two Britain, looks at their wartime experiences and their reception by the British.

Movements of people to Britain from across its empire and the world long pre-dated the Second World War, but the scale of wartime movements was unprecedented. People mingled and mixed in a rich variety of transnational and trans-ethnic encounters. The talk focuses on some of the factors that shaped these encounters including ethnicity, language and sexuality. It also looks at the methods used in researching and writing Mixing It, particularly through the use of personal stories told in interviews, diaries, letters and memoirs.