The Home Front 1914 1918

In this exceptional study, the author goes beyond the sphere of party politics to explore the industrial aspects of French wartime history.

The civilian police during the First World War in Great Britain were central to the control of the population at home. This book will show the detail and challenges of police work during the First World War and how this impacted on ordinary people’s daily lives. The aim is to tell the story of the police as they saw themselves through the pages of their best-known journal, The Police Review and Parade Gossip, in addition to a wide range of other published, archival and private sources.

Explores the experiences of middle-class men on the English home front during the First World War

The Great War had a profound impact on Britain. Not only did families risk their sons in active combat; every member of society was required to make a contribution to the war effort. National initiatives like rationing affected all, and civilians were now regarded as a legitimate military target. Reminders of this turbulent time survive today, in rituals such as Summer Time and Remembrance, nationwide war memorials, and the powerful myth of a lost generation slaughtered in a futile war. Here Ian Beckett examines the mobilization of the British people for the war effort and reassesses its impact on state and society. As evidence, he presents 40 key documents, including the King's rallying cry to the nation to 'eat less wheat', reports on social phenomena from anti-German riots to the drinking habits of women and juveniles, and Kitchener's initiatives to raise his New Armies.

A rich new examination of the cultural, social and self-representation of the woman surgeon in Britain from 1860 to 1918. This title is also available as Open Access.

Endorsed by Edexcel, this book covers the topic of Britian at home in World War I. It provides background information on the topic.

In this, the first fully documented study of British and Irish popular reactions to the outbreak of the First World War, Catriona Pennell explores UK public opinion of the time and successfully challenges the myth of British 'war enthusiasm'. A Kingdom United explores what people felt, and how they acted, in response to an unanticipated and unprecedented crisis. It is a history of both ordinary people and elite figures in extraordinary times. Dr Pennell demonstrates that describing the reactions of over 40 million British and Irish people to the outbreak of war as either enthusiastic in the British case, or disengaged in the Irish, is over-simplified and inadequate. Emotional reactions to the war were ambiguous and complex, and changed over time. By the end of 1914 the populations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland had largely embraced the war, but the war had also embraced them and showed no signs of relinquishing its grip. The five months from August to December 1914 set the shape of much that was to follow. A Kingdom United describes and explains that twenty-week formative process. Pennell draws from a vast array of diaries, letters, journals, and newspaper accounts by the very people who experienced the war in its first dramatic five months. She outlines the variety of responses felt amongst both the ordinary people and elite figures from across the country.

World War I was the first large-scale industrialized military conflict, and it led to the concept of total war. The essays in this volume analyze the experience of the war in light of this concept's implications, in particular the erosion of distinctions between the military and civilian spheres.