Search

This article tests three contentions advanced by Adrian Gregory in his book The Last Great War: first, that the reaction to the outbreak of war in 1914 was not one of universal unthinking enthusiasm; second, that the provincial press took a sober and critical view of the imminent outbreak of hostilities; and third, that volunteering was a more layered experience than a simple rush to the colours. The methodology adopted has been to review the Berrow’s Journal newspaper between January 1914 and January 1915, looking particularly at the editorial views of the paper, views expressed through the paper via ‘Letters to the Editor’, accounts of meetings and quotations from speakers and the events and information that the newspaper chose to report. Berrow’s Journal has been chosen as a weekly newspaper and as a Unionist newspaper in a strongly Unionist region, where if jingoism were to be found, a superficial reading might suggest it would be found there. The figures on enlistments quoted in the newspaper will be tested against the author’s own research using fatal casualties as a representative sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contrasting, and sometimes conflicting, narratives of early twentieth century remembrance are explored in this article. Individual personal inscriptions to Midlands men in the cemeteries of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission around the Ypres Salient are set against the prevailing motifs of remembrance as defined by Leicester’s high-profile memorials to the South African War and the First World War. This comparison sets out to explore the extent to which public memorials directed and reflected the expressions of the next-of-kin, and discovers that the public narrative of remembrance was not as straightforward as it was sometimes presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While all cathedrals endured bouts of iconoclasm in the English civil wars, and many endured military attack, Lichfield suffered more than others, besieged twice in 1643 and for a third time in 1646. An eyewitness account of the first two sieges, in March and April 1643, written by the dean, Griffith Higgs, has been overlooked by historians because it is written in Latin. Translated for the first time here, it allows more detailed analysis not only of the 1643 the sieges, but also of the iconoclasm that the cathedral endured at the hands of the Parliament's troops after the first siege. Like other eyewitness accounts of attacks on cathedrals in 1642–3, it provides an insight into Royalist attitudes at the beginning of the war, as well as a means of assessing post-Restoration claims about the extent of damage and desecration at the hands of rebellious Parliamentarians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]