Forgotten Lunatics Of The Great War

This is a poignant, sometimes ribald, history of the rank-and-file servicemen who were psychiatric casualties of World War One.

Shell shock achieved a very high political profile in the years 1919-1922. Publications ranging from John Bull to the Morning Post insisted that shell-shocked men should be treated with respect, and the Minister for Health announced that the government was committed to protecting shell-shocked men from the stigma of lunacy. Yet at the same time, many mentally-wounded veterans were struggling with a pension system which was failing to give them security. It is this conflict between the political rhetoric and the lived experience of many wounded veterans that explains why the government was unable to dispel the negative wartime assessment of official shell-shock treatment. There was also a real conflict between the government's wish to forget shell shock whilst memorialising the war and remembering the war dead. As a result of these contradictions, shell shock was not forgotten, on the contrary, the shell-shocked soldier quickly grew to symbolise the confusions and inconsistencies of the Great War.

This is a detailed study of an important figure whose differing perceptions of the Great War throw valuable light on the way in which war is remembered and narrated.

This open access book explores the history of asylums and their civilian patients during the First World War, focusing on the effects of wartime austerity and deprivation on the provision of care. While a substantial body of literature on ‘shell shock’ exists, this study uncovers the mental wellbeing of civilians during the war. It provides the first comprehensive account of wartime asylums in London, challenging the commonly held view that changes in psychiatric care for civilians post-war were linked mainly to soldiers’ experiences and treatment. Drawing extensively on archival and published sources, this book examines the impact of medical, scientific, political, cultural and social change on civilian asylums. It compares four asylums in London, each distinct in terms of their priorities and the diversity of their patients. Revealing the histories of the 100,000 civilian patients who were institutionalised during the First World War, this book offers new insights into decision-making and prioritisation of healthcare in times of austerity, and the myriad factors which inform this.

A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection The modern classic of contemporary war fiction - a Man Booker Prize-nominated examination of World War I and its deep legacy of human traumas. 'A brilliant novel. Intense and subtle' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times Craiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, and army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers's job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients' minds the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front. Pat Barker's Regeneration is the classic exploration of how the traumas of war brutalised a generation of young men. This is the first novel in Pat Barker's Man Booker Prize-winning Regeneration Trilogy: I: Regeneration II: The Eye in the Door III: The Ghost Road 'A vivid evocation of the agony of the First World War and a multi-layered exploration of all wars. A fine anthem for doomed youth' Time Out 'A novel of tremendous power' Margaret Forster 'Unforgettable' Sunday Telegraph 'One of the strongest and most interesting novelists of her generation' Guardian

The course of events of the Great War has been told many times, spurred by an endless desire to understand 'the war to end all wars'. However, this book moves beyond military narrative to offer a much fuller analysis of of the conflict's strategic, political, economic, social and cultural impact. Starting with the context and origins of the war, including assasination, misunderstanding and differing national war aims, it then covers the treacherous course of the conflict and its social consequences for both soldiers and civilians, for science and technology, for national politics and for pan-European revolution. The war left a long-term legacy for victors and vanquished alike. It created new frontiers, changed the balance of power and influenced the arts, national memory and political thought. The reach of this acount is global, showing how a conflict among European powers came to involve their colonial empires, and embraced Japan, China, the Ottoman Empire, Latin America and the United States.

When war was declared in August 1914, it not only changed the lives of the soldiers who fought, but also the lives of their families, their neighbourhood and, ultimately, the whole of society. Women came out of their homes to take up work in industry, to drive the trams, to police the streets as well as nurse the wounded. Government, local and national, imposed extensive controls on all aspects of social life - who could remain in work, who had to fight, what could be grown as crops, what clothes were appropriate and how to feed a family. This study looks at how these changes affected Huddersfield and its inhabitants, showing how employment changed, how the town contributed to financing the war and how the local tribunals dealt with those who did not want to fight. Local families, from the highest to the lowest walks of life, find their stories illustrated here.

This is a history of military psychiatry in the twentieth century. Both absorbing historical narrative and intellectual detective story, it weaves literary, medical, and military lore to give us a fascinating history of war neuroses and their treatment, from the World Wars through Vietnam and up to the Gulf War.