British Internment and the Internment of Britons: Second World War Camps, History and Heritage

This edited volume presents a cutting-edge discussion and analysis of civilian ’enemy alien’ internment in Britain, the internment of British civilians on the continent, and civilian internment camps run by the British within the wider British Empire. The book brings together a range of interdisciplinary specialists including archaeologists, historians, and heritage practitioners to give a full overview of the topic of internment internationally.

Very little has been written about the experience of interned Britons on the continent during the Second World War compared with continentals interned in Britain. Even fewer accounts exist of the regime in British Dominions where British guards presided over the camps. This collection is the first to bring together the British experiences, as the common theme, in one study. The new research presented here also offers updated statistics for the camps whilst considering the period between 1945 to the present day through related site heritage issues.

Gilly Carr is Associate Professor in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is the author of seven monographs including Victims of Nazism in the Channel Islands: A Legitimate Heritage? (2019) and is currently writing A Materiality of Internment about the creativity produced in internment camps in Germany in WWII.

Rachel Pistol is a digital historian at King’s College London, UK, where she works on the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) and is the National Coordinator of EHRI-UK. She has published widely on refugees and Second World War internment including Internment during the Second World War (2017) and is the co-editor, along with Larissa Allwork, of The Jews, the Holocaust, and the Public (2019).