Fought across the world, the First World War struck deepest at home. Few neighbourhoods, villages, towns or regions emerged untouched by the global conflict of 1914-18. The 2014 Anglo-American conference took as its theme the impact of the First World War on the locality and local institutions, on the family and social life, and on the memorialisation of war in the built environment and in private life. The reviews in this special issue reflect the themese covered in the conference.
The Great War for Peace / William Mulligan
Review Date: 29 January 2015
The deluge that is the centenary of 1914–18 war is upon us.
Prohibition Review Article / William Haydock
Review Date: 04 September 2014
Alcohol policy never ceases to be controversial.
Abandoning American Neutrality: Woodrow Wilson and the Beginning of the Great War, August 1914-December 1915 / Ryan Floyd
Review Date: 24 July 2014
Ryan Floyd’s Abandoning American Neutrality should be considered required reading about America’s entry into the First World War.
Art from the First World War Review Article / Ross Davies
Review Date: 24 July 2014
I cannot help a passing allusion to the lack of pictorial records of this war – records made by artists of experience, who actually witness the scenes they portray.Thus Norman Wilkinson (1878–1971), musing in the opening paragraph of his 1916 The Dardanelles: Colour Sketches from Gallipoli on the sights he had just seen at the Suvla Bay landings in the first year of the Great War.
The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century / David Reynolds
Review Date: 24 July 2014
This book achieves two aims: to locate the Great War in the history of the 20th century, and to show how, as the 20th century unfolded, our understanding of the meaning and significance of the Great War changed as well.
The Children’s War: Britain, 1914-1918 / Rosie Kennedy
Review Date: 17 July 2014
Asked to call to mind images of children and war in Britain, and the most ready association is that of children living through the ordeal of bombing and evacuation in the Second World War. The Children’s War, Britain 1914–1918 re-directs our attention to the lives of British children in the Great War.
First World War Digital Resources /
Review Date: 17 July 2014
The centenary of the First World War has acted as a catalyst for intense public and academic attention. One of the most prominent manifestations of this increasing interest in the conflict is in the proliferation of digital resources made available recently.
Organized Patriotism and the Crucible of War: Popular Imperialism in Britain, 1914-1932 / Matthew Hendley
Review Date: 17 July 2014
Matthew Hendley’s Organized Patriotism examines the ways in which three ‘patriotic and imperialist leagues’ coped with the impact of the First World War. Focusing on the ‘politically and socially acceptable’ National Service League, League of the Empire and Victoria League (p.
In eiserner Zeit: Kriegswahrzeichen im Ersten Weltkrieg / Gerhard Schneider
Review Date: 17 July 2014
Endless books have attempted to answer the question as to why the First World War broke out in summer 1914, and the centenary of the July crisis will no doubt prompt historians and popular audiences to further revisit the circumstances in which European leaders ‘sleepwalked’ into a military conflict of unprecedented proportions.
Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality and Women’s Experience of Modern War, 1914-18 / Laura Doan
Review Date: 10 July 2014
‘We have to produce something that doesn’t yet exist and of which we can have no idea of what it will be’.
