A century since the Armistice, World War I looms larger than ever in the UK's cultural and historical imaginary. Known first as 'the Great War' and then 'the war to end all wars', it was fought in new ways with new technologies, with unprecedented psychological effects on its participants, and this led writers and artists - many of whom were combatants - to find new forms to describe it.
This week, Juliet talks to Charlotte Jones (King's College London) about how the war has been represented from 1914 to the present, especially in poetry, memoir and literature, and why portrayals in film and TV cause so much anxiety for those who insist it be remembered as a heroic sacrifice rather than a senseless waste.
SELECTED REFERENCES
LAURENCE BINYON, 'For the Fallen' (1914) - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57322/for-the-fallen
Blackadder Goes Forth (TV series, 1989) - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/06/blackadder-michael-gove-historians-first-world-war
Blast (journal, 1914-15) - https://spikemagazine.com/wyndham-lewis-blast-an-explosive-journal/
MARY BORDEN, The Forbidden Zone (1929) - http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Borden2/fz.html
Rupert Brooke
Mira Calix - Beyond the Deepening Shadows: The Tower Remembers (2018)
Alan Clark (diarist/MP)
Jeffery Daly
JEREMY DELLER, 'We're Here Because We're Here' (2016)
T. S. Eliot
Richard Evans (historian)
Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer)
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska - https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/henri-gaudier-brzeska-1143
Julian Grenfell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Grenfell
RADCLYFFE HALL, 'Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself' (1926) - https://bartee11.wordpress.com/texts/radclyffe-halls-miss-ogilvy-finds-herself/
RADCLYFFE HALL, The Well of Loneliness (1928)
THOMAS HARDY, 'Men Who March Away' (1914) - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57195/men-who-march-away
F. W. Harvey - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._W._Harvey
Homer (Greek poet)
Horace (Roman poet)
T. E. Hulme - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/t-e-hulme
ALDOUS HUXLEY, Brave New World (1932)
DAVID JONES, In Parenthesis (1937) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Parenthesis
JOE KENNEDY, Authentocrats (2018) - http://review31.co.uk/essay/view/64/the-great-northern-morlock-hunt
RUDYARD KIPLING, Epitaphs of the War (1919) - http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_epitaphs1.htm
Wyndham Lewis - https://spartacus-educational.com/ARTlewis.htm
F. T. MARINETTI, 'War, the World's Only Hygiene' (1911) - https://www.unknown.nu/futurism/war.html
The Monocled Mutineer (TV series, 1986) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092404/
Charles S. Myers - https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/shell-shocked.aspx
C. R. W. Nevinson - https://spartacus-educational.com/ARTnevinson.htm
Friedrich Nietzsche
Oh! What a Lovely War (dir. Richard Attenborough, 1969)
WILFRED OWEN, 'Dulce et Decorum Est' (1918) - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est
Ezra Pound
Herbert Read - https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWread.htm
Isaac Rosenberg - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/isaac-rosenberg
Siegfried Sassoon - https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/siegfried-sassoons-statement-of-protest-against-the-war-and-related-letters
George Bernard Shaw
C. H. Sorley - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sorley
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON, 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' (1854) - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade
They Shall Not Grow Old (dir. Peter Jackson, 2018) - https://silentlondon.co.uk/2018/10/16/lff-review-they-shall-not-grow-old-honours-veterans-but-not-the-archive/
'To Suffragettes' (BLAST, 1914) - http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Blast/Blast1-1_To-Suffragettes.pdf
Vorticist artists: David Bomberg, Jessica Dismorr, William Roberts, Helen Sanders, Dorothy Shakespear, Edward Wadsworth - https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/06/vorticism-exhibition-lewis
REBECCA WEST, The Return of the Soldier (1918) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_Soldier