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A close run thing for York academic

Posted on 25 July 2014

A University of York academic has narrowly missed out on the Royal Historical Society’s prestigious Whitfield Prize with his book on the history of rationing in World War Two.

The Society awards the prize to the best new book published in English anywhere in the world on British or Irish history and the judges made Dr Mark Roodhouse’s Black Market Britain a runner-up in a field of nearly 50 entries.

Dr Roodhouse, of the Department of History at York, said: “While I am disappointed to miss out on the Prize, this was a high calibre field and I’m pleased that my book bore comparison with them.”

The judges' citation stated: "Britain's experience of rationing during the Second World War presents challenges to the historian, who seeks to tread a path between patriotic myth and the folklore of the black market, and also for the economic theorist, forced to contemplate a world where rational calculations of individual self-interest are only part of the picture.

“Mark Roodhouse's Black Market Britain draws on a range of hitherto under-exploited sources to build up a vivid and convincing picture of the way in which citizens came to terms with war-time rationing and price controls. An implicit but clearly understood 'moral economy' allowed consumers to exploit loopholes in the system, creating a socially acceptable 'grey market', while largely shunning the genuine 'black market', which remained on the fringes of British society.

“The result is a richly textured analysis of the gap between legality and popular conceptions of justice, and of the survival under pressure of communal norms of fairness and reciprocal obligation."

The winner was Scott Sowerby for Making Toleration and the two proxime accesserunt (runners up) were Dr Roodhouse and Levi Roach for Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England.

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