In this pioneering and original book, Anthony Seldon and David Walsh study the impact that the public schools had on the conduct of the Great War, and vice versa. Drawing on fresh evidence from 200 leading public schools and other archives, they challenge the conventional wisdom that it was the public school ethos that caused needless suffering on the Western Front and elsewhere. They distinguish between the younger front-line officers with recent school experience and the older 'top brass' whose mental outlook was shaped more by military background than by memories of school.??The Authors argue that, in general, the young officers' public school education imbued them with idealism, stoicism and a sense of service. While this helped them care selflessly for the men under their command in conditions of extreme danger, it resulted in their death rate being nearly twice the national average.??This poignant and thought-provoking work covers not just those who made the final sacrifice, but also those who returned, and?whose lives were shattered as a result of their physical and psychological wounds. It contains a wealth of unpublished detail about public school life before and during the War, and how these establishments and the country at large coped with the devastating loss of so many of the brightest and best. Seldon and Walsh conclude that, 100 years on, public school values and character training, far from being concepts to be mocked, remain relevant and that the present generation would benefit from studying them and the example of their predecessors.??Those who read Public Schools and the Great War will have their prevailing assumptions about the role and image of public schools, as popularised in Blackadder, challenged and perhaps changed.

How the First World War influenced the author of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy: “Very much the best book about J.R.R. Tolkien that has yet been written.” —A. N. Wilson As Europe plunged into World War I, J. R. R. Tolkien was a student at Oxford and part of a cohort of literary-minded friends who had wide-ranging conversations in their Tea Club and Barrovian Society. After finishing his degree, Tolkien experienced the horrors of the Great War as a signal officer in the Battle of the Somme, where two of those school friends died. All the while, he was hard at work on an original mythology that would become the basis of his literary masterpiece, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In this biographical study, drawn in part from Tolkien’s personal wartime papers, John Garth traces the development of the author’s work during this critical period. He shows how the deaths of two comrades compelled Tolkien to pursue the dream they had shared, and argues that the young man used his imagination not to escape from reality—but to transform the cataclysm of his generation. While Tolkien’s contemporaries surrendered to disillusionment, he kept enchantment alive, reshaping an entire literary tradition into a form that resonates to this day. “Garth’s fine study should have a major audience among serious students of Tolkien.” —Publishers Weekly “A highly intelligent book . . . Garth displays impressive skills both as researcher and writer.” —Max Hastings, author of The Secret War “Somewhere, I think, Tolkien is nodding in appreciation.” —San Jose Mercury News “A labour of love in which journalist Garth combines a newsman’s nose for a good story with a scholar’s scrupulous attention to detail . . . Brilliantly argued.” —Daily Mail (UK) “Gripping from start to finish and offers important new insights.” —Library Journal “Insight into how a writer turned academia into art, how deeply friendship supports and wounds us, and how the death and disillusionment that characterized World War I inspired Tolkien’s lush saga.” —Detroit Free Press

A lasting memorial to those from the cricketing world who fought and those who fell.

This book examines the ways in which scholarly expertise was mobilized during the First World War, and the consequences of this for the inter-connected academic world that had developed in the late nineteenth century. Adopting a strong international approach, the contributors to this volume examine the impact of the War on individuals, institutions, and disciplines, cumulatively demonstrating the strong afterlife of conflict for scholarly practices and academic communities across Europe and North America, in the decades following the cessation of the Great War.

The First World War was one of the prime motors of social change in modern British history. Culture and technology at all levels were transformed. The growing impact of the state, the introduction of modern democracy and change in political allegiance affected most aspects of the lives of UK citizens. Whilst most of the current centenary interest focuses on military aspects of the conflict, this volume considers how these fundamental changes varied from locality to locality within Britain’s Home Front. Taken together, did they drastically alter the long-established importance of regional variations within British society in the early twentieth century? Was there a common national response to these unprecedented events, or did strong regional identities cause significant variations? The series of case studies presented in this volume – ranging geographically and by topic – detail how communities coped with the war’s outbreak, its upheavals, its unprecedented mass mobilization on all fronts, and its unforeseen longevity.

When news of the war broke out in 1914, nothing could prepare the citizens of Bath for the changes that would envelop their city over the next four years. The story of Bath in the Great War is both an interesting and intriguing one. This book covers this historic city's involvement from the commencement of the Great War in July 1914, to the Armistice in November 1918, describing in great detail what happened to the city and its people, including their everyday lives, entertainment, spies and the internment of aliens living within the city. Bath played a key role in the deployment of troops to Northern Europe as well as supplying vital munitions. Local men responded keenly to recruitment drives and thousands of soldiers were billeted in the city before being sent off to fight the enemy overseas. The city also played a vital role caring for the many wounded soldiers who returned home from the front. As the end of the war was announced there were tremendous celebrations in the streets, but the effects of war lasted for years to come. By the end of the conflict, there wasn't a family in Bath who hadn't lost a son, father, nephew, uncle or brother. Bath features many forgotten news stories of the day and includes a considerable collection of rare photographs last seen in newspapers nearly 70 years ago.

This book challenges scholarship which presents charity and voluntary activity during World War I as marking a downturn from the high point of the late Victorian period. Charitable donations rose to an all-time peak, and the scope and nature of charitable work shifted decisively. Far more working class activists, especially women, became involved, although there were significant differences between the suburban south and industrial north of England and Scotland. The book also corrects the idea that charitably-minded civilians’ efforts alienated the men at the front, in contrast to the degree of negativity that surrounds much previous work on voluntary action in this period. Far from there being an unbridgeable gap in understanding or empathy between soldiers and civilians, the links were strong, and charitable contributions were enormously important in maintaining troop morale. This bond significantly contributed to the development and maintenance of social capital in Britain, which, in turn, strongly supported the war effort. This work draws on previously unused primary sources, notably those regarding the developing role of the UK’s Director General of Voluntary Organizations and the regulatory legislation of the period.

A comprehensive new history of the shaping and performance of the British army during the First World War.

The experiences of World War I touched the lives of a generation but memories of this momentous experience vary enormously throughout the world. In Britain, there was a strong reaction against militarism but in the Dominion powers of Canada, Australia and New Zealand the response was very different. For these former colonial powers, the experience of war was largely accepted as a national rite of passage and their pride and respect for their soldiers' sacrifices found its focus in a powerful nationalist drive. How did a single, supposedly shared experience provoke such contrasting reactions? What does it reveal about earlier, pre-existing ideas of national identity? And how did the memory of war influence later ideas of self-determination and nationhood? "Altered Memories of the Great War" is the first book to compare the distinctive collective narratives that emerged within Britain and the Dominions in response to World War I. It powerfully illuminates the differences as well as the similarities between different memories of war and offers fascinating insights into what this reveals about developing concepts of national identity in the aftermath of World War I.