In 1914 Britain was home to at least 10,000 black Britons, many of African and West Indian heritage. Most of them were loyal to the 'mother country' when the First World War broke out. Despite being discouraged from serving in the British Army, men managed to join all branches of the forces, while black communities contributed to the war effort on the home front. By 1918 it is estimated that Britain's black population had trebled to 30,000, as many black servicemen who had fought for Britain decided to make it their home. It was far from a happy ending, however, as they and their families often came under attack from white ex-servicemen and civilians increasingly resentful of their presence. With first-hand accounts and original photographs, Black Poppies is the essential guide to the military and civilian wartime experiences of black men and women, from the trenches to the music halls. It is intended as a companion to Stephen Bourne's previous books published by The History Press: Mother Country: Britain's Black Community on the Home Front 1939–45 and The Motherland Calls: Britain's Black Servicemen and Women 1939–45.

This book highlights the growing divide in nineteenth-century intellectual circles between amateur and professional interest, and explores the institutional means whereby professional ascendancy was achieved in the broad field of studies of the past. It is concerned with how antiquarian 'gentlemen of leisure', pursuing their interests through local archaeological societies, were, by the end of the century, relegated to the sidelines of the now university-based discipline of history. At the same time it explores the theological as well as technical barriers which arrested the development of archaeology in this period. This is a notable contribution to the intellectual history of Victorian England, attending not simply to the ideas perpetrated by these communities of scholarship but to their social status, relating such social consideration to a more traditional intellectual history to create a new social history of ideas.