Home Front in Britain - Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences Since 1914

"This collection of fourteen, academically rigorous and accessible chapters explores the British Home Front in the last 100 years since the outbreak of WW1. The wide range of case studies include war widows allowances, Landgirls, the role of factory inspectors in WW1 and canal boat women, national savings, Guernsey evacuees and clothes rationing in WW2. The meaning and images of the British home and family in times of war are interrogated in the past and in contemporary culture to challenge prevalent myths of how working and domestic and shifted in times of national conflict. This volume is intended to encourage a reappraisal of the place of the Home Front in British conceptualisations of war and conflict"--

List of contents

Introduction; Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas 1. The Idea and Ideal of Domesticity and Home in WW1; Maggie Andrews 2. A Personal Account of The Home Front; Angela Clare Smith 3. Soldiering on: War Widows in WW1 Britain; Janis Lomas 4. Mortality or Morality? Keeping Workers Safe in World War One; Anne Spurgeon 5. A Heroine at Home: The Housewife on the WW1 Home Front; Karen Hunt 6. Female Agricultural Workers in Wales in WW1; Thomas George 7. Ellen Wilkinson and Home Security; Paula Bartley 8. Guernsey Mothers and Children: Forgotten Evacuees; Gillian Mawson 9. The Home Front as a 'Moment' for Animals and Humans: Exploring the Animal - Human Relationship in Contemporary Diaries and Letters; Hilda Kean 10. The Weak and the Wicked: Non-Conscripted Masculinities in 1940s British Cinema; Paul Elliott 11. Rationing in WW2: Creativity and Buying to Last; Elspeth King and Maggie Andrews 12. The 'Idle Women': Breaking Gender Stereotypes on Britain's Inland Waterways During the Second World War;Barbara Hately-Broad and Bob Moore 13. 'Doing Your Bit': Women and the National Savings Movement in the Second World War; Rosalind Watkiss Singleton 14. Contemporary Images and Ideas of the Home Front; Maggie Andrews

Report

"This is a rich and potent mix of topics that both enhances our knowledge of the wars and, perhaps more significantly, suggests yet more avenues for future research. ... This book in its wide-ranging survey is certainly 'doing its bit' to challenge some of the misconceptions we hold about the two home fronts, opens up discussion on several hitherto neglected aspects and adds significantly to our knowledge." (Peter Grant, Review in History, history.ac.uk, April, 2016)

Product details

• Authors: Maggie Andrews, Maggie Lomas Andrews, Janis Lomas
• Assisted by: Andrews (Editor), M Andrews (Editor), M. Andrews (Editor), Maggie Andrews (Editor), J. Lomas (Editor), Janis Lomas (Editor), Richard Smoke (Editor)
• Publisher: Palgrave UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.10.2014
• EAN: 9781137348982
• ISBN: 978-1-137-34898-2
• No. of pages: 263
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; B, History, Social History, Political Science, military history, Social & cultural history, Politics & government, Second World War, United States of America, USA, History, Modern, Palgrave History Collection, Modern History, History of Britain and Ireland, Great Britain—History, US Politics, United States—Politics and government, History of Military, World War, 1939-1945, History of World War II and the Holocaust