Richard Vinen's National Service is a serious—if often very entertaining—attempt to get to grips with the reality of that extraordinary institution, which now seems as remote as the British Empire itself. With great sympathy and curiosity, Vinen unpicks the myths of the two "gap years," which all British men who came of age between 1945 and the early 1960s had to fill with National Service. This book is fascinating to those who endured or even enjoyed their time in uniform, but also to anyone wishing to understand the unique nature of post-war Britain.