Histories, Memories and Representations of being Young in the First World War

✍ Scribed by Maggie Andrews, N. C. Fleming, Marcus Morris

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 258
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book seeks to place children and young people centrally within the study of the contemporary British home front, its cultural representations and its place in the historical memory of the First World War. This edited collection interrogates not only war and its effects on children and young people, but how understandings of this conflict have shaped or been shaped by historical memories of the Great War, which have only allowed for several tropes of childhood during the conflict to emerge. It brings together new research by emerging and established scholars who, through a series of tightly focussed case studies, introduce a range of new histories to both explore the experience of being young during the First World War, and interrogate the memories and representations of the conflict produced for children. Taken together the chapters in this volume shed light on the multiple ways in which the Great War shaped, disrupted and interrupted childhood in Britain, and illuminate simultaneously the selectivity of the portrayal of the conflict within the more typical national narratives. 

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Contributors
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction
Part I: Childhood in War
Chapter 2: ‘Birmingham clapped her hands with the rest of the world, welcoming the signs of peace’: Working-Class Urban Childhoods in Birmingham, London and Greater Manchester During the First World War
Introduction
‘With our father safe and secure at home, the war ceased to exist for us’
‘Food was scarce and expensive’
‘Do you think there will be an air raid?’
‘The two who became my favourites were young men in the Royal Engineer Corps’
Conclusion
Chapter 3: The Radical Responses Made by Women in Manchester, During the First World War, to the ‘special problems of child life accentuated by the war’
Introduction
The War
Maternity and Infant Welfare
Munitions Work, War Work and Its Effect on Families
Education of Children
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Childhood Interrupted: Work and Schooling in Rural Worcestershire
Introduction
Worcestershire Children in Wartime
Children’s Labour in the Fields and Homes
Education Interrupted
Children Who Came to Work in Worcestershire
The Conflict in the Classroom
The Significance of the Conflict
Part II: Youth in War
Chapter 5: Fears of the Dark: Young People and the Cinema During the First World War
Introduction
Wartime Cinema
Age, Gender and Generation
Sinister Sounds in Darkness
Conclusion
Chapter 6: The Navy League, the Rising Generation and the First World War
Introduction
The Navy League
The Navy League and Schools
The Boys’ Naval Brigade
Wartime Disappointments and Opportunities
Navalism and Schools During the War
Lessons of War
Chapter 7: ‘Girls Who Would Fight’: Young Women and the Call to Arms During the First World War
Introduction
‘Women and Girls of England: Your Hour Has Come!’
‘Girls Who Would Fight’
‘Women at the Present Time Are Best Away from the Public Eye’
‘Envying Our Brave Tommies’
Chapter 8: ‘It Didn’t Worry Me a Bit’: Coming of Age in London in the First World War
Introduction
Munitionettes
Memory
London at War
Consumerism
Leisure
Conclusion
Chapter 9: Students, Service and Sacrifice: Wartime Education, Adolescent Experiences and Understandings of the First World War
Introduction
Commemorating the First World War in Preston
The Harris Institute and Youth Education
Fishwick Life Stories
Volunteer Reflections
Conclusion
Part III: Memories and Representations
Chapter 10: Women at the Front and Class Enemies Reconciled: Anachronism in First World War Children’s Novels in the Last Four Decades
Introduction
Tropes and Myths in Children’s Stories About the First World War
How Class Is Portrayed
Depictions of Women and Gender Equality
Twenty-First Century Attitudes to Sex in Children’s Novels About the First World War
Modern Sensibilities in Children’s Historical Fiction
Conclusion
Chapter 11: Watching and Remembering the Great War: The First World War, Young People, and Television as Sight of Memory, 1968–2014
Introduction
Screen Memorials: Televising the First World War, c. 1968–89
Transmitting Memory: Television and the Centennial, c. 2002–2014
Conclusion
Chapter 12: Problematising Palatable Pasts: Histories and Children in Britain’s First World War Commemoration
Introduction
Palatable Histories for Children
National Commemoration for Young People
Schools, Teachers and the Commemoration
Local Commemoration Activities
The Legacy of the Commemoration
Index