Great War on the Small Screen

Great War on the Small Screen

Author: Emma Hanna

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2009-10-20

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0748633901

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In Britain since the 1960s television has been the most influential medium of popular culture. Television is also the site where the Western Front of popular culture clashes with the Western Front of history.This book examines the ways in which those involved in the production of historical documentaries for this most influential media have struggled to communicate the stories of the First World War to British audiences. Documents in the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham, Berkshire, the Imperial War Museum, and the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives all inform the analysis. Interviews and correspondence with television producers, scriptwriters and production crew, as well as two First World War veterans who appeared in several recent documentaries provide new insights for the reader.Emma Hanna takes the reader behind the scenes of the making of the most influential documentaries from the landmark epic series The Great War (BBC, 1964) up to more recent controversial productions such as The Trench (BBC, 2002) and Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight (BBC, 2008). By examining the production, broadcast and reception of a number of British television documentaries this book examines the difficult relationship between the war's history and its popular memory.


Histories on Screen

Histories on Screen

Author: Sam Edwards

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-02-08

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1474217060

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How, as historians, should we 'read' a film? Histories on Screen answers this and other questions in a crucial volume for any history student keen to master source use. The book begins with a theoretical 'Thinking about Film' section that explores the ways in which films can be analyzed and interrogated as either primary sources, secondary sources or indeed as both. The much larger 'Using Film' segment of the book then offers engaging case studies which put this theory into practice. Topics including gender, class, race, war, propaganda, national identity and memory all receive good coverage in what is an eclectic multi-contributor volume. Documentaries, films and television from Britain and the United States are examined and there is a jargon-free emphasis on the skills and methods needed to analyze films in historical study featuring prominently throughout the text. Histories on Screen is a vital resource for all history students as it enables them to understand film as a source and empowers them with the analytical tools needed to use that knowledge in their own work.


The Great War in Post-Memory Literature and Film

The Great War in Post-Memory Literature and Film

Author: Martin Löschnigg

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-10-14

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 311039152X

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The twenty-seven original contributions to this volume investigate the ways in which the First World War has been commemorated and represented internationally in prose fiction, drama, film, docudrama and comics from the 1960s until the present. The volume thus provides a comprehensive survey of the cultural memory of the war as reflected in various media across national cultures, addressing the complex connections between the cultural post-memory of the war and its mediation. In four sections, the essays investigate (1) the cultural legacy of the Great War (including its mythology and iconography); (2) the implications of different forms and media for representing the war; (3) ‘national’ memories, foregrounding the differences in post-memory representations and interpretations of the Great War, and (4) representations of the Great War within larger temporal or spatial frameworks, focusing specifically on the ideological dimensions of its ‘remembrance’ in historical, socio-political, gender-oriented, and post-colonial contexts.


The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century

The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century

Author: David Reynolds

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2014-05-12

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 0393088634

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Winner of the 2014 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for the Best Work of History. "If you only read one book about the First World War in this anniversary year, read The Long Shadow. David Reynolds writes superbly and his analysis is compelling and original." -Anne Chisolm, Chair of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize Committee, and Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth century. He shows how events in that turbulent century—particularly World War II, the Cold War, and the collapse of Communism—shaped and reshaped attitudes to 1914–18. By exploring big themes such as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism, as well as art and poetry, The Long Shadow is stunningly broad in its historical perspective. Reynolds throws light on the vast expanse of the last century and explains why 1914–18 is a conflict that America is still struggling to comprehend. Forging connections between people, places, and ideas, The Long Shadow ventures across the traditional subcultures of historical scholarship to offer a rich and layered examination not only of politics, diplomacy, and security but also of economics, art, and literature. The result is a magisterial reinterpretation of the place of the Great War in modern history.


Landscapes and Voices of the Great War

Landscapes and Voices of the Great War

Author: Angela K. Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-02-03

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1351856405

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This volume aims to provide a wider view of First World War experience through focusing on landscapes less commonly considered in historiography, and on voices that have remained on the margins of popular understanding of the war. The landscape of the western front was captured during the conflict in many different ways: in photographs, paintings and print. The most commonly replicated voicing of contemporary attitudes towards the war is that of initial enthusiasm giving way to disillusionment and a sense of overwhelming futility. Investigations of the many components of war experience drawn from social and cultural history have looked to landscapes and voices beyond the frontline as a means of foregrounding different perspectives on the war. Not all of the voices presented here opposed the war, and not all of the landscapes were comprised of trenches or flanked by barbed wire. Collectively, they combine to offer further fresh insights into the multiplicity of war experience, an alternate space to the familiar tropes of mud and mayhem.


Curating the Great War

Curating the Great War

Author: Paul Cornish

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-31

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1000631206

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Curating the Great War explores the inception and subsequent development of museums of the Great War and the animating spirit which lay behind them. The book approaches museums of the Great War as political entities, some more overtly than others, but all unable to escape from the politics of the war, its profound legacies and its enduring memory. Their changing configurations and content are explored as reflections of the social and political context in which they exist. Curating of the Great War has expanded beyond the walls of museum buildings, seeking public engagement, both direct and digital, and taking in whole landscapes. Recognizing this fact, the book examines these museums as standing at the nexus of historiography, museology, anthropology, archaeology, sociology and politics as well as being a lieux de mémoire. Their multi-vocal nature makes them a compelling subject for research and above all the book highlights that it is in these museums that we see the most complete fusion of the material culture of conflict with its historical, political and experiential context. This book is an essential read for researchers of the reception of the Great War through material culture and museums.


The Long Shadow

The Long Shadow

Author: David Reynolds

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-11-07

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 0857206389

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In Britain we have lost touch with the Great War. Our overriding sense now is of a meaningless, futile bloodbath in the mud of Flanders -- of young men whose lives were cut off in their prime for no evident purpose. But by reducing the conflict to personal tragedies, however moving, we have lost the big picture: the history has been distilled into poetry. In TheLong Shadow, critically acclaimed author David Reynolds seeks to redress the balance by exploring the true impact of 1914-18 on the 20th century. Some of the Great War's legacies were negative and pernicious but others proved transformative in a positive sense. Exploring big themes such as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism and re-examining the differing impacts of the War on Britain, Ireland and the United States,TheLong Shadowthrows light on the whole of the last century and demonstrates that 1914-18 is a conflict that Britain, more than any other nation, is still struggling to comprehend. Stunningly broad in its historical perspective, The Long Shadowis a magisterial and seismic re-presentation of the Great War.


Haig and Kitchener in Twentieth-Century Britain

Haig and Kitchener in Twentieth-Century Britain

Author: Stephen Heathorn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1317124111

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Lord Kitchener and Lord Haig are two monumental figures of the First World War. Their reputations, both in their lifetimes and after their deaths, have been attacked and defended, scrutinized and contested. They have been depicted in film, print and public memorials in Britain and the wider world, and new biographies of both men appear to this day. The material representations of Haig and Kitchener were shaped, used and manipulated for official and popular ends by a variety of groups at different times during the twentieth century. The purpose of this study is not to discover the real individual, nor to attack or defend their reputations, rather it is an exploration of how both men have been depicted since their deaths and to consider what this tells us about the nature and meaning of First World War commemoration. While Haig's representation was more contested before the Second World War than was Kitchener's, with several constituencies trying to fashion and use Haig's memory - the Government, the British Legion, ex-servicemen themselves, and bereaved families - it was probably less contested, but overwhelmingly more negative, than Kitchener's after the Second World War. The book sheds light on the notion of 'heroic' masculinity - questioning, in particular, the degree to which the image of the common soldier replaced that of the high commander in the popular imagination - and explores how the military heritage in the twentieth century came into collision with the culture of modernity. It also contributes to ongoing debates in British historiography and to the larger debates over the social construction of memory, the problematic relation between what is considered 'heritage' and 'history', and the need for historians to be sensitive and attentive to the interconnections between heritage and history and their contexts.


The Great War and the Moving Image

The Great War and the Moving Image

Author: Michael Hammond

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-12-07

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1315461633

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The Great War and the Moving Image focuses upon the Allied war effort on the Western Front and in the Mediterranean. In doing so, the book addresses topics ranging from how carefully selected images projected a positive portrayal of ambulance trains, through film’s instructional role promoting self-sufficiency on the home front, to the vital role of makeshift YMCA cinemas both sides of the Channel. With editors and contributors who are authorities on cinema in wartime Britain and on the British response to the challenge of ‘total war’, the volume highlights the power that the moving image had during the Great War. In the introduction, the editors consider why the First World War can be seen as the first uniquely cinematic conflict. Later, historians from Britain, Australia, and America go on to explore film’s pioneering role as a powerful vehicle for propaganda at home and abroad, and its contribution to maintaining morale among soldiers on the front line as well as across civilian audiences back home.


The Great War and the British Empire

The Great War and the British Empire

Author: Michael Walsh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-25

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 1317029828

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In 1914 almost one quarter of the earth's surface was British. When the empire and its allies went to war in 1914 against the Central Powers, history's first global conflict was inevitable. It is the social and cultural reactions to that war and within those distant, often overlooked, societies which is the focus of this volume. From Singapore to Australia, Cyprus to Ireland, India to Iraq and around the rest of the British imperial world, further complexities and interlocking themes are addressed, offering new perspectives on imperial and colonial history and theory, as well as art, music, photography, propaganda, education, pacifism, gender, class, race and diplomacy at the end of the pax Britannica.