British Culture and the First World War

Experience, Representation and Memory

Toby Thacker

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781441180742
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441134370
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The First World War has been mythologized since 1918, and many paradigmatic views of it - that it was pointless, that brave soldiers were needlessly sacrificed - are deeply embedded in the British consciousness. More than in any other country, these collective British memories were influenced by the experiences and the work of writers, painters and musicians.

This book revisits the British experience of the War through the eyes and ears of a diverse group of carefully selected novelists, poets, composers and painters. It examines how they reacted to and portrayed their experiences in the trenches on the Western Front, in distant theatres of war and on the home front, in words, pictures and music that would have a profound influence on subsequent British perceptions of the war.

Rupert Brooke, Vera Brittain, Richard Nevinson, Paul Nash, Edward Elgar and T. E. Lawrence are amongst the figures discussed in this original exploration of the First World War and British collective memory. The book includes illustrations and maps to aid further study and research.

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of illustrations
• List of maps
• Introduction
• 1 ‘The blessings of peace’
• 2 August 1914
• 3 The call to arms
• 4 January–June 1915
• 5 July–December 1915
• 6 January–September 1916
• 7 September 1916–July 1917
• 8 August–December 1917
• 9 January–July 1918
• 10 August–November 1918
• 11 1919–23
• 12 ‘We will remember them’
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Archival sources, newspapers, journals and magazines
• Further reading
• Index
• Copyright