By Kevin Seabrooke

Professor Allport’s Advance Britannia picks up where Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War 1938-1941, described by The Wall Street Journal as “the single best examination of British politics, society, and strategy [from 1938 to 1941] that has ever been written,” left off.

The Imperial Japanese Navy has just launched its surprise attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Churchill is ready to declare war on Japan, but calls American President Theodore Roosevelt before he does.

While on the phone, Churchill is told by his secretary that the Japanese troop convoy spotted by a Royal Airforce reconnaissance plane the day before in the South China Sea is unloading an invasion force on the British colony of Malaya.

“We are all in the same boat now,” remarked Roosevelt wryly.

Allport is the author of Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War and Browned Off and Bloody-Minded: The British Soldier Goes to War 1939–1945.

Advance Britannia: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1942-1945 (Alan Allport, Knopf, New York, NY, 656 pp., maps, illustrations, bibliography, index, Jan. 6, 2026 $40 HC))

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