ABSTRACT
Societies at war need to establish and articulate a sense of traditional and shared values. As was suggested in the previous chapter, one aspect of tradition which was given prominence was that of the well-managed home and the female ‘home-maker’. The politics of gender were given a new prominence by the war, and women were defined as citizens in the British sense of the appropriate world order. But however homogeneous some values about Britain were, it became apparent during 1939-45 that Britons had highly diverse cultural tastes and expectations. Indeed, the battle for control of the national culture was, at times, hotly contested.
