Department of History

One modern family takes on the challenge of domestic life on Britain's home front in 1940s House, a re-creation of a World War II household. This time-travel experiment covers the period from the outbreak of the war in 1939 to Victory Day in 1945, compressing the events of six wartime years into two months. Though the military threat is metaphorical, the privations are real and the pressures create tensions nonexistent in modern society.The three-generation Hymers family-mother Lyn, father Michael, daughter Kirstie and her sons Ben, ten, and Thomas, seven-learns to exist on ever-diminishing rations and builds and takes refuge in an air raid shelter. A "war cabinet," composed of historians and scientists with special knowledge of the war, monitors the family's progress and steers the course of the experiment. At the end of 1940s House, viewers find out what the experience meant to the family and members of the series' war cabinet consider how well the Hymers fared in comparison to their wartime counterparts.