The Books of My Life: The World at War

I don't recall when I first saw Thames Television's Second World documentary The World at War. I must have seen it sometime in 1973 on American television. It was first broadcast in the US in September and in October on ITV in the UK. I do recall being very impressed by the show. I remain impressed with The World at War some fifty years later. it remains one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.

Taylor Downing's The World at War (London: BFI, BFI TV Classics series, 2012) uses interviews with those who made the documentary, including The World at War's general Jeremy Isaacs, archival research, much of it in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, which provided extensive help for the programme, and memoirs to explore the origins, personnel who worked on the documentary, production, narrative structure, music, footage used in the show, and critical and public reaction to the The World at War. Downing argues that The World at War, one of the first British documentaries to move away from the historical recreation model of documentary, remains much watched today because of its use of oral histories, many of them with common men and women who survived the war, its multi layered narrative form, and, in particular, its escape from the typical structure of many war documentaries, that manichean binary of heroes and villains.

Recommended for those interested in British television, British television documentaries, World War II, documentaries, and World War II even if, for me, there is to much of the anecdotal in the monograph.