WW1 and Britain; then and now.

2018

We would like to extend thanks to the Head and Vice Head of the of the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University-Marianne Rostgaard and Lise-Lotte Holmgreen-for the Department's generous support which made the publication of this work possible. We are also grateful to Aalborg University Library which, as always, has been helpful and quick in obtaining necessary materials. Aalborg University Press (AUP) consented to publishing this book which we are very happy about, as the book is written in Aalborg's interdisciplinary tradition and AUP is the natural place to publish it. Fruitful and constructive feedback was given by anonymous peer reviewers, as well as Professor Alan Sharp from Ulster University: thank you! Ashley Kim Stewart, MSc, undertook the task of language revision. Professor Li Xing yielded good collegial support and advice, and Christina Dosenrode, BA, helped her father overcome the peculiarities of references and layout. Dedication This book is dedicated to our children and our students in the utopian hope that they might learn something of the past's mistakes, and avoid repeating them.

The current centenary of the First World War provides an unrivalled opportunity to uncover some of the social legacies of the war. The four articles which make up this special issue each examine a different facet of the war’s impact on British society to explore an as yet untold story. The subjects investigated include logistics, the history of science, the social history of medicine and resistance to war. This article introduces the four which follow, locating them in the wider historiographic debates around the interface between warfare and societies engaged in war.

The Cambridge History of the First World War, 2013

Timing counts for so much in publishing and that is never clearer than when a major anniversary approaches. With the centenary of the First World War not yet actually upon us, there has already been a rush of publications. Meanwhile, just as many of the grandest television and radio programmes promised by the BBC have already been aired. Do we know anything we did not know a year or two ago? Have new perspectives been aired? Similarly, the big question for many centenary-type publications is how far they advance understanding, or perform a useful summative role, or merely take advantage of public interest?

This is the full programme of the seminar series held at the Imperial War Museum London in 2010-2011, in the course of which I presented my contribution on "Wartime Music Hall: Myths and Realities".

2021

Project Report from 'Reflections on the Centenary of the First World War: Learning and Legacies for the Future'. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

2017

fighting Americans from Wisconsin, a state that in 1910 had a majority who spoke German as their first language. Although on the Western Front the war ended at 11.00 a.m. (British time) on 11 November 1918, the fighting did not. What may be called the 'aftershock wars' or 'successor wars' to the First World War continued in regions as diverse as Mesopotamia, Ukraine and Ireland well into the 1920s. How to expand the scope of the history of the First World War was shown at the turn of the millennium by the monumental collaboration between German and American scholars studying the nature of total war, orchestrated by the German Historical Institute in London. 4 Only a decade later, the sheer breadth and depth of the current approaches to the First World War has been well illustrated by the publication in 2014 (in English and French) of the new three-volume Cambridge History of the First World War, edited by Jay Winter. 5 This encompassed the work of scholars of many nationalities, ranging across all countries and cultures affected, from narratives and theatres of war through to the broader role of the state at war, and the role of civil society including the war's aftermath and memorialisation. III. Cultures of Remembrance The centenary anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War has been a particularly piquant challenge, which the British have taken extremely seriously. In October 2012, at the main London site of the Imperial War Museums, Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans for an extensive British official commemoration programme for the First World War which has now started, and which is intended to last until the end of 2018. 6 For the British (and for most English-speakers), and in contrast to the rest of Europe except for Belgium, it has always been the First World War rather than the Second World War which was the great tragic event of the 20th Century. The central paradox of the British experience of the First World War is that the war enjoyed massive popular support from the British civilian

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This short essay explores and discusses the historiography of the cultural history of the Great War, principally from a British perspective. As an introduction to the main themes of continuity and change in how the war's cultural impact has been understood and interpreted, there is also a brief analysis of the painting 'Clio and the Children' by the British artist Charles Sims.