The Virago Book Of Women And The Great War

Collection of extracts from unpublished diaries and letters, newspaper cuttings and printed memoirs, documenting women's reactions to, and involvement in, the World War of 1914-18.

In 1912, Norland childrens nurse Kate Fox was travelling by train heading to the British military station at Nowshera on the Afghan border to care for the premature baby born to the bases commanding officer. Two years later, Kate was escaping from Germany in the first days of the Great War, leaving behind her adored German royal charges and all her personal possessions. Due to their prestige as the crme-de-la-crme of Edwardian childrens nurses to Europes royal and wealthy families, Kate was one among many Norland nannies who witnessed the early days of the War on the Continent with all its tumult and fear. Some fled for home; others managed to stay for a while. And yet others gave up their privileged way of life to undertake war work as nurses in Flanders and refugee camps.The stories in this book are the nannies eye-witness accounts described in their correspondence with their beloved Norland Institute. These previously unpublished letters recount a version of womens Great War history that has remained untold until now. British Nannies and the Great War is the true story of a group of Edwardian, highly trained and opinionated women in the First World War. For the first time in a century, the Norland nannies unique stories of escape from enemy territory, their experiences at home and the Front during the War, and their thoughts on how the conflict changed their role in post-Edwardian Britain are told in their own words.

Imagine ‘stepping into someone else’s shoes’. Walking back in time a century ago, which shoes would they be? A pair of silk sensations costing thousands of pounds designed by Yantonnay of Paris or wooden clogs with metal cleats that spark on the cobbles of a factory yard? Will your shoes be heavy with mud from trudging along duckboards between the tents of a frontline hospital... or stuck with tufts of turf from a football pitch? Will you be cloaked in green and purple, brandishing a ‘Votes for Women’ banner or will you be the height of respectability, restricted by your thigh-length corset?Great War Fashion opens the woman’s wardrobe in the years before the outbreak of war to explore the real woman behind the stiff, mono-bosomed ideal of the Edwardian Society lady draped in gossamer gowns, and closes it on a new breed of women who have donned trousers and overalls to feed the nation’s guns in munitions factories and who, clad in mourning, have loved and lost a whole generation of men.The journey through Great War Fashion is not just about the changing clothes and fashions of the war years, but much more than that – it is a journey into the lives of the women who lived under the shadow of war and were irrevocably changed by it. At times, laugh-out-loud funny and at others, bringing you to tears, Lucy Adlington paints a unique portrait of an inspiring generation of women, brought to life in rare and stunning images.

Nursing.

The millennium has sharpened perspectives on the history of women in twentieth-century Britain. Many features of the contemporary gender order date only from the last decades of the century – the expectation of equal opportunities in education and the work-place, sexual autonomy for the individual and tolerance of a variety of family forms. The years dominated by the two World Wars saw real advances towards equal citizenship and legal rights, and a growing sense of the impact on women of 'modernity' in its various forms, including consumerism and the mass media. But values inherited from the Victorians were still reflected in the class hierarchy, the policing of sexuality and the male-breadwinner family. This anthology of original sources, accompanied by a state-of-the-art bibliography, illustrates patterns of continuity and change in women's experience and their place in national life. An introductory survey provides an accessible overview and analysis of controversial issues, such as the relationship between 'first', 'second' and 'third' wave feminism.

Deriving from the 20th Anniversary Women’s History Network Conference entitled ’20 Years of the Women’s History Network: Looking Back – Looking Forward’, this volume reflects on the state of women’s and gender history as well as showcasing the diversity of the current field. The range of contributions is broad and stimulating, covering such themes as transnational movements, gender and space, sexualities, motherhood, and women in politics. Together, the interdisciplinary chapters reflect the rich diversity of current women’s history and historiography, and will offer important insight to students and scholars researching the past, present and future of feminist studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women’s History Review.

Death, Men and Modernism argues that the figure of the dead man becomes a locus of attention and a symptom of crisis in British writing of the early to mid-twentieth century. While Victorian writers used dying women to dramatize aesthetic, structural, and historical concerns, modernist novelists turned to the figure of the dying man to exemplify concerns about both masculinity and modernity. Along with their representations of death, these novelists developed new narrative techniques to make the trauma they depicted palpable. Contrary to modernist genealogies, the emergence of the figure of the dead man in texts as early as Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure suggests that World War I intensified-but did not cause-these anxieties. This book elaborates a nodal point which links death, masculinity, and modernity long before the events of World War I.

Jeremy Paxman's magnificent history of the First World War tells the entire story of the war in one gripping narrative from the point of view of the British people. NOW A MAJOR BBC TELEVISION SERIES "He writes so well and sympathetically, and chooses his detail so deftly, that if there is one new history of the war that you might actually enjoy from the very large centennial selection this is very likely it" The Times We may think we know about it, but what was life really like for the British people during the First World War? The well-known images - the pointing finger of Lord Kitchener; a Tommy buried in the mud of the Western Front; the memorial poppies of remembrance day - all reinforce the idea that it was a pointless waste of life. So why did the British fight it so willingly and how did the country endure it for so long? Using a wealth of first-hand source material, Jeremy Paxman brings vividly to life the day-to-day experience of the British over the entire course of the war, from politicians, newspapermen, campaigners and Generals, to Tommies, factory workers, nurses, wives and children, capturing the whole mood and morale of the nation. It reveals that life and identity in Britain were often dramatically different from our own, and show how both were utterly transformed - not always for the worst - by the enormous upheaval of the war. Rich with personalities, surprises and ironies, this lively narrative history paints a picture of courage and confusion, doubts and dilemmas, and is written with Jeremy Paxman's characteristic flair for storytelling, wry humour and pithy observation. "A fine introduction to the part Britain played in the first of the worst two wars in history. The writing is lively and the detail often surprising and memorable" Guardian Jeremy Paxman is a renowned broadcaster, award-winning journalist and the bestselling author of seven works of non-fiction, including The English, The Political Animal and Empire.