This volume continues the recent trend towards expanding definitions of war experience through considering a range of different landscapes and voices. Not all landscapes were comprised of trenches and barbed wire. Voices, supporting or dissenting, were many and varied. Collectively, they combine to offer fresh insights into the multiplicity of war experience, alternate spaces to the familiar tropes of mud and mayhem.

This comparative and transnational study of landscapes in the First World War offers new perspectives on the ways in which landscapes were idealised, mobilised, interpreted, exploited, transformed and destroyed by the conflict. The collection focuses on four themes: environment and climate, industrial and urban landscapes, cross-cultural encounters, and legacies of the war. The chapters cover Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa and the US, drawing on a range of approaches including battlefield archaeology, military history, medical humanities, architecture, literary analysis and environmental history. This volume explores the environmental impact of the war on diverse landscapes and how landscapes shaped soldiers’ experiences at the front. It investigates how rural and urban locales were mobilised to cater to the demands of industry and agriculture. The enduring physical scars and the role of landscape as a crucial locus of memory and commemoration are also analysed. The chapter 'The Long Carry: Landscapes and the Shaping of British Medical Masculinities in the First World War' is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

This book explores how humorous depictions of the Great War helped to familiarise, domesticate and tame the conflict. In contrast to the well-known First World War literature that focuses on extraordinary emotional disruption and the extremes of war, this study shows other writers used humour to create a gentle, mild amusement, drawing on familiar, popular genres and forms used before 1914. Emily Anderson argues that this humorous literature helped to transform the war into quotidian experience. Based on little-known primary material uncovered through detailed archival research, the book focuses on works that, while written by celebrated authors, tend not to be placed in the canon of Great War literature. Each chapter examines key examples of literary texts, ranging from short stories and poetry, to theatre and periodicals. In doing so, the book investigates the complex political and social significance of this tame style of humour.

The First World War has given rise to a multifaceted cultural production like no other historical event. This handbook surveys British literature and film about the war from 1914 until today. The continuing interest in World War I highlights the interdependence of war experience, the imaginative re-creation of that experience in writing, and individual as well as collective memory. In the first part of the handbook, the major genres of war writing and film are addressed, including of course poetry and the novel, but also the short story; furthermore, it is shown how our conception of the Great War is broadened when looked at from the perspective of gender studies and post-colonial criticism. The chapters in the second part present close readings of important contributions to the literary and filmic representation of World War I in Great Britain. All in all, the contributions demonstrate how the opposing forces of focusing and canon-formation on the one hand, and broadening and revision of the canon on the other, have characterised British literature and culture of the First World War.

Religion did much to shape contemporary British opinion and behaviour during the First and Second World Wars, but it featured rather less in the initial historiography of either conflict. The situation has changed considerably in the past half-century, with a steadily increasing number of academic and popular outputs on the religious aspects of the wars. As key milestones, in connection with the centenary of the First World War and the eightieth anniversary of the Second World War, have occurred or approach, it seems an appropriate time to take bibliographical stock. This volume is the first to offer an in-depth listing of modern literature, in English and other European languages, on British religion and the First and Second World Wars, both on the home front and in combat zones. Coverage extends to Judaism and alternative religion, as well as Christianity. More than 1,200 items are included, comprising monographs, book chapters, journal articles, and postgraduate theses. They are arranged by subjects, in separate sections on each war, with cross-references and a cumulative index of personal names. Carefully compiled over several years by an accomplished religious historian and bibliographer, the work will be an indispensable reference tool to those embarking on investigations into the religious landscape of Britain during the World Wars, and those who wish to discover what has been written about their chosen field to date. It will also help identify gaps in scholarship and encourage researchers to try and fill them.

There have been thousands of books on the Great War, but most have focused on commanders, battles, strategy, and tactics. Less attention has been paid to the daily lives of the combatants, how they endured the unimaginable conditions of industrial warfare: the rain of shells, bullets, and chemical agents. In The Secret History of Soldiers, Tim Cook, Canada's foremost military historian, examines how those who survived trench warfare on the Western Front found entertainment, solace, relief, and distraction from the relentless slaughter. These tales come from the soldiers themselves, mined from the letters, diaries, memoirs, and oral accounts of more than five hundred combatants. Rare examples of trench art, postcards, and even song sheets offer insight into a hidden society that was often irreverent, raunchy, and anti-authoritarian. Believing in supernatural stories was another way soldiers shielded themselves from the horror. While novels and poetry often depict the soldiers of the Great War as mere victims, this new history shows how the soldiers pushed back against the grim war, refusing to be broken in the mincing machine of the Western Front. The violence of war is always present, but Cook reveals the gallows humour the soldiers employed to get through it. Over the years, both writers and historians have overlooked this aspect of the men's lives. The fighting at the front was devastating, but behind the battle lines, another layer of life existed, one that included songs, skits, art, and soldier-produced newspapers. With his trademark narrative abilities and an unerring eye for the telling human detail, Cook has created another landmark history of Canadian military life as he reveals the secrets of how soldiers survived the carnage of the Western Front.

This volume looks at Canadian women’s experiences of, and contributions to, the world wars through objects, images, and archival documents. The book tells the stories of women who worked as civilians, served in the military, volunteered their time, and grieved lost loved ones, through thematically organized vignettes. The authors place these personal narratives of individual woman, and their related material culture, in the wider context of the world wars while demonstrating that the experience of living through global conflict was as individual as a woman’s particular circumstances. Drawing from the collections of the Canadian War Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, and other public and private collections in Canada, Material Traces of War brings largely unknown material culture collections to public view and draws attention to the untold stories of women and war.