Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in History, has recently published an article in the journal Cultural and Social History on the role of public libraries in the naval town of Portsmouth, UK during the Second World War. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here. Abstract: In 1942 a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city’s inhabitants to ‘read for victory’, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country’s political and civic elites to encourage the nation’s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified […]
