Order in Ruins: British Society and the Media Assemblage of The World at War c. 1970 - 1975

This thesis is a critical empirical and theoretical study of the production of The World at War, a hugely popular and internationally influential televised documentary series about the Second World War produced in London in the early 1970s. The thesis provides a new examination of how an intense combination of debates at that time over media technology, social class, gender relations, cultural community boundaries, and inter-generational conflict, informed and shaped the production's identity and influenced both its aims to pedagogically and ethically challenge its intended mass audience, as well as the extent to which those aims were realised.

This thesis is a new investigation of the making of The World at War, a hugely popular and internationally influential televised documentary series about the Second World War produced in London in the early 1970s.