The literature of the British home front differs distinctly in both quantity and nature between t... more The literature of the British home front differs distinctly in both quantity and nature between the two wars themselves. With regard to the Second there is a lengthy tradition of lively debate between the popular idea of 'jolly cockneys in the Blitz' and more considered revisionist studies stretching back at least to Angus Calder's The People's War: Britain 1939-1945 first published in 1969. With regard to the First the volumes are considerably fewer and only a handful attempt a general overview. The 'classic' text is still Arthur Marwick's The Deluge: British Society and the First World War which dates from 1965 with perhaps Gerard de Groot's, recently updated as Back in Blighty: The British at Home in World War One, to challenge it. Though Marwick's thesis of war as a crucible for social change has been seriously challenged, as the authors point out in their introduction, the idea is a tenacious one in popular versions of both wars.(1) This challenge has mainly focussed on the role of women and this current volume forms a new and notable addition.
Nobody has yet tried to count the full value of the immense outpouring of generosity, the multitu... more Nobody has yet tried to count the full value of the immense outpouring of generosity, the multitude of sacrifices the War has called forth. Nobody is able to count it.' W.E.Dowding 1 This article is a belated attempt to prove Dowding's comment wrong. It seeks to measure the extent of the financial and human resources mobilised by non-uniformed voluntary action in support of Britain's war effort. It also seeks to determine the effect this had upon existing charitable causes and to ascertain some basic facts about the class composition of charity activists. Though some details about First World War charities are quite widely known, knowledge tends to be anecdotal and unsystematic. There has been no attempt to calculate how extensive fundraising was, how many volunteers gave their time or from which strata of society they came. The usual suggestion is that the majority of charity workers were upper and middle-class women and that the overall impact of charity, in terms of building the social capital that helped win the war, was less significant than other activities such as uniformed volunteering or other women's war work. Yet when the facts are examined this view is, at best, a partial and distorted one. BACKGROUND That there was a massive outpouring of charitable effort on the outbreak of war in 1914 is widely acknowledged. What is less clear is how this activity related to the prewar charitable context and to responses in the most recent conflicts in which Britain had been engaged, most notably the Crimean and South African wars.
Expertise in monitoring and measuring effectiveness in the grant-funded sector has been develop... more Expertise in monitoring and measuring effectiveness in the grant-funded sector has been developing and improving for several years. However, can grant-making bodies improve their effectiveness by using predictive techniques to inform their decision-making? This paper reports work ...
This monograph examines the relationship between music and memory as it relates to the Gallipoli ... more This monograph examines the relationship between music and memory as it relates to the Gallipoli Campaign (1915-6). Drawing upon a wide variety of sources in many languages, it explores the multiple ways in which music is employed to remember and to forget, to celebrate and to commemorate a victory (on the part of the Central Powers) and a defeat (on the part of the Allied forces) in the Dardanelles during the First World War (1914-8). Further, it argues that commemoration itself can be viewed as an ‘instrument of war’. In particular, it investigates the complex positionality of individual actors during the centennial commemorations of the Gallipoli landings (24 April, 2015) where the Australians and the Turks most notably have employed music to reimagine the past, both nationalities invoking the ‘Gallipoli spirit’ (tr. ‘Canakkale ruhu’) to advance a nationalist agenda and a resurgent militarism through the selective memorialization of an imperial past. The book interrogates through music the ambivalent position of minorities. With specific reference to the Irish (amongst the British) and the Armenians (amongst the Ottomans), it shows how song might serve both to articulate a nationalist defiance and an imperialist consensus during a tumultuous period of irredentism. By uncovering the complex pathways of musical transmission, it demonstrates through musical analysis how the colonized could become the colonizer (in the case of the Irish) or a minority might conform to a majority (in the case of the Armenians). Further, the publication looks at the uneasy alliance between the Turks and the Germans. It focuses on a German musician (as an imperial bandmaster) and Germanic entrepreneurs (in the recording industry) who entertained or who served the German Mission in Istanbul. Here, it considers by way of musical composition the shared wish on the part of the Germans and the Turks to create a Lebensraum in Asia.
The literature of the British home front differs distinctly in both quantity and nature between t... more The literature of the British home front differs distinctly in both quantity and nature between the two wars themselves. With regard to the Second there is a lengthy tradition of lively debate between the popular idea of 'jolly cockneys in the Blitz' and more considered revisionist studies stretching back at least to Angus Calder's The People's War: Britain 1939-1945 first published in 1969. With regard to the First the volumes are considerably fewer and only a handful attempt a general overview. The 'classic' text is still Arthur Marwick's The Deluge: British Society and the First World War which dates from 1965 with perhaps Gerard de Groot's, recently updated as Back in Blighty: The British at Home in World War One, to challenge it. Though Marwick's thesis of war as a crucible for social change has been seriously challenged, as the authors point out in their introduction, the idea is a tenacious one in popular versions of both wars.(1) This challenge has mainly focussed on the role of women and this current volume forms a new and notable addition.
Nobody has yet tried to count the full value of the immense outpouring of generosity, the multitu... more Nobody has yet tried to count the full value of the immense outpouring of generosity, the multitude of sacrifices the War has called forth. Nobody is able to count it.' W.E.Dowding 1 This article is a belated attempt to prove Dowding's comment wrong. It seeks to measure the extent of the financial and human resources mobilised by non-uniformed voluntary action in support of Britain's war effort. It also seeks to determine the effect this had upon existing charitable causes and to ascertain some basic facts about the class composition of charity activists. Though some details about First World War charities are quite widely known, knowledge tends to be anecdotal and unsystematic. There has been no attempt to calculate how extensive fundraising was, how many volunteers gave their time or from which strata of society they came. The usual suggestion is that the majority of charity workers were upper and middle-class women and that the overall impact of charity, in terms of building the social capital that helped win the war, was less significant than other activities such as uniformed volunteering or other women's war work. Yet when the facts are examined this view is, at best, a partial and distorted one. BACKGROUND That there was a massive outpouring of charitable effort on the outbreak of war in 1914 is widely acknowledged. What is less clear is how this activity related to the prewar charitable context and to responses in the most recent conflicts in which Britain had been engaged, most notably the Crimean and South African wars.
Expertise in monitoring and measuring effectiveness in the grant-funded sector has been develop... more Expertise in monitoring and measuring effectiveness in the grant-funded sector has been developing and improving for several years. However, can grant-making bodies improve their effectiveness by using predictive techniques to inform their decision-making? This paper reports work ...
This monograph examines the relationship between music and memory as it relates to the Gallipoli ... more This monograph examines the relationship between music and memory as it relates to the Gallipoli Campaign (1915-6). Drawing upon a wide variety of sources in many languages, it explores the multiple ways in which music is employed to remember and to forget, to celebrate and to commemorate a victory (on the part of the Central Powers) and a defeat (on the part of the Allied forces) in the Dardanelles during the First World War (1914-8). Further, it argues that commemoration itself can be viewed as an ‘instrument of war’. In particular, it investigates the complex positionality of individual actors during the centennial commemorations of the Gallipoli landings (24 April, 2015) where the Australians and the Turks most notably have employed music to reimagine the past, both nationalities invoking the ‘Gallipoli spirit’ (tr. ‘Canakkale ruhu’) to advance a nationalist agenda and a resurgent militarism through the selective memorialization of an imperial past. The book interrogates through music the ambivalent position of minorities. With specific reference to the Irish (amongst the British) and the Armenians (amongst the Ottomans), it shows how song might serve both to articulate a nationalist defiance and an imperialist consensus during a tumultuous period of irredentism. By uncovering the complex pathways of musical transmission, it demonstrates through musical analysis how the colonized could become the colonizer (in the case of the Irish) or a minority might conform to a majority (in the case of the Armenians). Further, the publication looks at the uneasy alliance between the Turks and the Germans. It focuses on a German musician (as an imperial bandmaster) and Germanic entrepreneurs (in the recording industry) who entertained or who served the German Mission in Istanbul. Here, it considers by way of musical composition the shared wish on the part of the Germans and the Turks to create a Lebensraum in Asia.
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