had resulted in more evacuees from London than during the first Blitz, and that, partly in consequence, London was getting ‘appreciably emptier’. A few days later, in a further letter to his wife, he recorded that 59 flying bombs had passed over or close to the cathedral, a new record.80 The impact of these new weapons was more formally recorded in Problems of Social Policy, where it was noted that, for instance, procedures such as evacuation operated better in this period than earlier in the war.81
Producing Problems of Social Policy proved a demanding task, but Titmuss rose to the challenge. In so doing, he constructed a narrative about the Home Front which became highly influential. For Titmuss himself, what he saw as the social cohesion and solidarities of wartime Britain became a framework for his understanding of what might be achieved, but whose legacy had not been properly fulfilled. Indeed, for some of his later critics, Titmuss was more at home in the 1940s than in the ‘Affluent Society’ which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. As ever with Titmuss, his work in the 1940s consumed him. The next three chapters deal with some of his other activities, undertaken alongside the monumental project of writing his wartime history.
Notes
1R.H. Tawney, Land and Labour in China, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1932, pp 140–60. I am grateful to Professor Ann Oakley for alerting me to this work.
2TITMUSS/ADD/1/18, letter, 15 January 1951, RMT to A.A. Blytheway, Ministry of Labour and National Service.
3TITMUSS/7/59, letter, 7 December 1951, RMT to Carr-Saunders.
4TITMUSS/ADD/1/18, letter, 21 July 1952, RMT to Richard Hammond, Ministry of Food.
5K. Hancock, ‘Preface’, in S. Ferguson and H. Fitzgerald, Studies in the Social Services, London, HMSO, 1954.
6This paragraph draws on Oakley, Man and Wife; and J. Harris, ‘Thucydides Amongst the Mandarins: Hancock and the World War II Civil Histories’, in D.A. Low (ed), Keith Hancock: The Legacies of an Historian, Carlton South, Melbourne University Press, 2001, pp 122–48.
7TITMUSS/7/44, memorandum, 3 June 1944, Hancock to ‘Mr Titmuss, Mr Davidson, Mr Wormald’.
8TITMUSS/7/44, Hancock, ‘Circular to Historians’, 27 November 1945, p 1 and passim.
9W.K. Hancock, ‘Preface’, in W.K. Hancock and M. Gowing, British War Economy, London, HMSO, 1949, pp x, xi–xii, xiii.
10Harris, ‘Thucydides’, p 131.
11TITMUSS/7/44, letter, ? November 1943, RMT to Hancock; R.M. Titmuss, ‘Recent German Vital Statistics’, Lancet, 1942, II, p 434.
12A. Oakley, ‘Legacies of Altruism Richard Titmuss, Marie Meinhardt, and Health Policy Research in the 1940s’, Social Policy and Society, 18, 3, 2019, pp 385–6.
13F. Grundy and R.M. Titmuss, Report on Luton, Luton, The Leagrave Press, 1945, pp 139, 24–5.
14TITMUSS/7/44, letter, 25 February 1944, RMT to Hancock.
15TITMUSS/7/44, letter, 10 October 1944, Hancock to Wrigley.
16Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, p xi.
17TITMUSS/ADD/1/30, letter, 16 November 1949, RMT to Acheson.
18TITMUSS/ADD/1/18, letter, 21 November 1950, RMT to Acheson.
19TITMUSS/ADD/1/18, letter, 1 December 1950, Acheson to RMT.
20Harris, ‘Thucydides’, p 123.
21TITMUSS/7/44, memorandum, 12 November 1945, Brook to Hancock.
22TITMUSS/7/44, memorandum, undated but early 1948, ‘Official Histories: Mr Titmuss’ Volumes on “Social Policy”. Comments by Sir Norman Brook’, p 1 and passim.
23TITMUSS/7/44, memorandum, 29 April 1948, ‘P.D.P.’, Treasury, ‘Outline of Social Policy’, pp 1–2. It is unclear to whom this was addressed.
24TITMUSS/7/44, memorandum, 21 April 1948, RMT to Brook.
25TITMUSS/7/44, memorandum, 13 July 1948, RMT to Acheson.
26TITMUSS/7/44, letter, 7 August 1948, RMT to Hancock.
27TITMUSS/ADD/1/33, letter, 25 March 1949, Hancock to Brook.
28Harris, ‘Thucydides’, p 136.
29TITMUSS/ADD/1/33, letter, 18 July 1949, Acheson to RMT.
30TITMUSS/ADD/1/33, letter, 21 July 1949, RMT to Hancock.
31TITMUSS/7/44, letter, 5 December 1943, Powicke to Hancock.
32TITMUSS/7/44, letter, 5 February 1946, Glover to RMT.
33TITMUSS/7/44, letter, 12 May 1947, Auckland to RMT.
34TITMUSS/7/44, letter, 8 April 1949, Maud to Brook.
35TITMUSS/7/58,
