There had never been a war like it. It was the first ‘total war’ and it blew apart the certainties on which British society rested. Focusing on extraordinary personal stories to illuminate often cataclysmic events, each episode charts a different stage of the war: from initial optimism; to frustration; to the exhausted, poignant celebration of victory. It was the first war in British history in which men were conscripted to fight, civilians had their homes bombed, and every family feared a knock on the door bringing terrible news. Governments took for themselves powers they would never have imagined possible. Women did the jobs of men and found their lives transformed. Though the conflict brought terrible grief and hardship, Jeremy shows how support for the war remained solid even in its darkest days. Out of the furnace of the most devastating war the world had ever seen, modern Britain was born.