HENB01353U English - Elective 1, topic 3: The Great War: Society, experience and memory

The Great War is the first defining moment of 20^th century history. It is also the first conflict to engage civilians, industrialists and policy makers on such a scale that it constitutes ‘total war’. Its long-term effects on British society are consequently transformative. Through a careful reading of published and archival primary sources, this course will consider the effects of 1914-18 on individual soldiers, their families, and civilians. It explores too the collective political and social impacts of the Great War, and its afterlife through the 20^th century, in fiction, memoir and film.