Kit Kowol
Brisbane
Sometime historian, full time dog dad.
"Blue Jerusalem" (OUP, 2024)
"Warrior Britain: a Nation in Arms" (Allen Lane, forthcoming)
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Articles by Kit Kowol
The Past or a Foreign Country? Should the Conservatives Look to Churchill or Australia After the 2024 General Election?
Following its defeat at the 2024 general election, the Conservative Party will likely look for lessons either in its past—specifically its successful response to Labour's landslide victory in 1945—or from sister parties overseas, notably the Australian Liberal Party. The article argues that Britain and the Conservative Party have changed so fundamentally since the end of the World War Two—and indeed since 1997—to make any comparison meaningless.
New Jerusalem to Blue Jerusalem: radical visions of Britain's postwar future
By Kit Kowol September 30th 2024 The last verse of William Blake’s epic poem written in 1804 reads: I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land. Based on the theme of the Book of Revelations and its description of the Second Coming, it asks whether Jesus ever visited England and thus, for a brief moment, created Heaven on earth, while also imploring its readers to create an ideal society today.
Radical Conservative Possibilities
Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War by Kit Kowol Oxford University Press, 2024, 352 pages, $63.95 This intriguing book should appeal to those interested in British military, political, and cultural history, as well as those concerned with the very considerable philosophical and political possibilities of conservatism, both as they existed during the Second World War era and as they exist now.
Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War
Tories on the Home Front By Oxford University Press 352pp £30 Subscribe or Sign In to read the full article For People Who Devour Books
Book Review: Churchill won the Second World War but could not also win the peace
Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War by Kit Kowol The Second World War was a “People’s War” during which Labour prepared the great reforming measures it would implement after 1945, while the Conservatives were intellectually moribund and devoted no thought to the policies needed once the war had been won. This, according to Kit Kowol, is the received, but mistaken, view of the period 1940-45, and about that error he is probably correct.
Radical Conservatives and the Federal Union
We like to think that we know what the Second World War was fought for: freedom, democracy and the defeat of Germany and the evils of fascism. Compared to subsequent conflicts, the aims of the war seem self-evident and straightforward. But back in 1939, none of this was clear. Faced with a war he had desperately sought to avoid, no one was more tight-lipped about war aims than the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain.
A Cliché to Be Avoided Like the Plague: The ‘People’s War’ in the History and Historiography of the British Second World War*
The other authors of this forum have expended much energy on restating and elaborating a common understanding of the place of the concept of ‘people’s war’ in the historiography of the British Second World War. They do not respond to the bulk of my arguments about the nature of the concept—as a historians’ framing and as the supposedly central wartime ideology—or about the use of the term during the war.
“Churchill's Party”: A necessary experiment in personalization
The British Conservative Party is among the most institutionalized political parties in the world. Formed in the 1830s, by the late 19th century it had developed the kind of elaborate rules, procedures, and organizations, which are characteristic of a “routinized” political party.
His(Tory): why British History needs Conservatives
12 June, 2023 | 7 mins read British academia, and the study of British history in the UK, is overwhelmingly left-leaning. In any history department, you are likely to find colleagues with a similar set of views on Brexit (opposed), immigration (positive), public spending (more), taxes (higher), trade unions (not powerful enough) and climate change (an existential threat).
Scum of Britain, unite!
Enterprising politicians can use insults to their own advantage Name calling in politics. Get it right, and in just a few words you can create a pithy line that permanently defines your opponent. The term “guilty men” to describe those who supported appeasement, for example, was one that haunted Conservative politicians for decades.
Britain's obsession with the second world war and the debates that fuel it Original
The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited endless comparison to the second world war. Private labs have been likened to “Dunkirk little ships”; food bank support to “blitz spirit”, and even the queen equated the pain of self-isolation with wartime evacuation. What lies behind this seemingly near constant evocation of the second World War in Britain is not consensus, however, but contested views of what the war meant. To this day, this is something that cannot be settled in British politics.
Celebrating VE Day: Letters to the Former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill
Seventy-five years ago, on the day 8 May 1945 when Victory in Europe was declared, British people celebrated the end of almost six years of conflict with Germany with numerous acts of organised and spontaneous coming together. Street parties were held, bonfires were lit, concerts were given, and special church services laid on. In large towns and cities, many young people seemed drawn as if by an invisible force to gather in parks, squares (yes and fountains) to share in the revelry.
Primary sources for dissertation on WWII and British Historiography
Dr. Kit Kowol, who teaches the module ‘The Never Ending War: Britain and the Second World War, 1939-2019’, has a student, Lewis Hickmott, who is in need of help Lewis is working on the way in which the Empire’s contribution to the war effort was described in books on British history written in the post-war period.
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