1939: The World We Left Behind

by Robert Kee

History is based on choices, not truth. The way we see things now is not always how they looked at the time. The task Robert Kee set himself in his chronicle of 1939 was to cut across the demarcation lines of history, to capture the way people perceived the events of the time as they unfolded. Turning to the newspapers of the day, Kee revives for us a world in which the Second World War is not yet a certainty - a world which still has countless other concerns which have not yet been dwarfed into insignificance by the European emergency - a world in which Chamberlain is still to many a credible leader, and Churchill and Roosevelt, though giants in waiting, are less than monumental. In this thrilling account Kee explores life in the calm before the storm of 1939. Did the people of Britain see war coming? Or did the world change overnight, from stability to deadly conflict? Praise for 1939: The World We Left Behind : 'Authentic, absorbing ... and worth any number of conventional histories' - The Times Robert Kee , born in 1919, sat for his Oxford History degree in the summer of 1940, when France was falling. He joined the RAF the day after taking his last paper, became a bomber pilot, and was shot down and taken prisoner in 1942. After the war he began his journalistic career on Picture Post. He has worked for more than thirty years in radio and television, for both the BBC and ITV. He won the BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award in 1976.

390 pages, Paperback

Published May 20, 2021

About the author

Robert Kee, CBE was a broadcaster, journalist and writer, known for his historical works on World War II and Ireland.

He was educated at Stowe School, Buckingham, and read history at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a pupil, then a friend, of the historian A.J.P. Taylor.

During World War II he served in the Royal Air Force as a bomber pilot. His Hampden was shot down by flak one night while on a mine-laying operation off the coast of German-occupied Holland. He was imprisoned and spent three years in a German POW camp. This gave him material for his first book A Crowd Is Not Company. It was first published as a novel in 1947 but was later revealed to be an autobiography. It recounts his experiences as a prisoner of war and his various escapes from the Nazi camp. The Times describes it as "arguably the best POW book ever written."

His career in journalism began immediately after the Second World War. He worked for the Picture Post, then later became a special correspondent for The Sunday Times and The Observer. He was also literary editor of The Spectator.

In 1958 he moved to television. He appeared for many years on both the BBC and ITV as reporter, interviewer and presenter. He presented many current affairs programmes including Panorama, ITN's First Report and Channel 4's Seven Days. He was awarded the BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award in 1976.

Kee wrote and presented the documentary series Ireland – A Television History in 1980. The work was widely shown in the United Kingdom and the United States and received great critical acclaim, winning the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. Following its transmission on RTÉ, the Irish national broadcaster, Kee won a Jacob's Award for his script and presentation.