Many parties have a vested interest in shaping the way we remember the Great War ahead of its centenary, but some are more equal than others.
EPA/Thomas Bregardis
When prime minister Tony Abbott declared at Villers-Bretonneux that “no place on earth has been more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than these fields in France”, Australian attention focused again…
Different code for military medics?
Imperial War Museum
A century ago the world went to war. When the conflagration finally ended 10m soldiers lay dead. Among the fallen were 18 medical doctors who had trained at St George’s Hospital and countless more from…
Our book shelves would look very different.
Sharon Drummond
As we begin to commemorate the outbreak of World War I in earnest, just how central the “Great” war is to Britain’s conception of its history is ever more obvious. And this is also very true in terms of…
With the exquisite turn of phrase for which she was so highly regarded, Barbara Tuchman once likened the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war against Serbia of 28 July 1914 to an example of “the bellicose…
A new book on the battle of Fromelles adds to both what we know and how we should be wary of the battle’s popular legend.
AAP/Christopher James
Almost exactly 98 years ago, the Fromelles legend goes, the 5th Australian Division was thrown into battle by stupid British generals and slaughtered. Overnight, 5500 men were killed or wounded: supposedly…
Prince Faisal and his party (including T E Lawrence) at Versailles, 1919.
Wikimedia Commons
The sweeping advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has given rise to a lively debate about who should bear ultimate responsibility for the disintegration of Iraq and Syria. On one hand…
On 28 June 1914 Gavrilo Princip shot and killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. A little over a month later Europe was ablaze. There was a direct connection between the…
Ben Quilty, Captain S, after Afghanistan, 2012, oil on linen, 140 x 190cm.
War art, like war, changes with time – but not as much as we might like to believe. So what is its function, and how has it evolved over time? Two current exhibitions – the travelling show Ben Quilty…
While communities around the UK commemorate the British “conchies”, it is easy to forget the international dimension, especially when it comes to German anti-war activists. This is partly due to how the…
Peter Foley, The Crimson Field’s hospital orderly.
BBC/Nick Briggs
With the centenary commemorations continuing, all things World War I have been filling our screens, pages and radio waves. The latest of these was the BBC’s The Crimson Field, a drama set in a field hospital…
“A few days rest in billets”.
Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library
In its new exhibition, the British Library celebrate the subversive history of the comic. As ever, such a complex heritage can hardly be covered in such a show. But it is a symptom of a more widespread…
Tooth Hill Camp, 1918.
JB Winterburn. Source George Pascoe, 1918
A fantastic coincidence, coupled with research, led to my discovery of a wartime camp in the Jordan desert that was occupied in 1918. This was a camp used by T E Lawrence, or “Lawrence of Arabia”, and…
Personal records of soldiers and their families bring us closer to the effects and experience of war.
Australian War Memorial
The coming centenary of the first world war has already prompted some disquiet about a revival of the so-called “history wars”, given the significance of war to ideas of Australian national identity. In…
The rise of stitch and knit clubs, guerrilla knitting, yarn bombing and calls to knit sweaters for oil-spill affected penguins have all drawn attention to craft as a force for social change. Knitting is…
Trench warfare was a calculated strategy.
USMC Archives
Most wars are rich in tales of agency and decision. Yet many tales of the Great War are told otherwise. The dominant narrative tells us that we were passive victims of an irrational disaster. Everything…
An alternative form of war literature?
Nomadic Lass
In the year of the World War I centenary, much renewed attention has been paid to war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and tables in bookshops are groaning under the weight of their work. These…
Anniversaries encourage reflection. Now, 100 years after the start of the Great War, anyone who follows current affairs or reads a newspaper is part of a cultural conversation, a widespread reassessment…
Black Diggers tells the stories of young Indigenous soldiers who fought in the first world war. How did their stories get forgotten?
Jamie Williams/Sydney Festival
In August 2012, I was invited by the Sydney Festival to work with Wesley Enoch, Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company, to assist in developing Black Diggers, currently playing as part of the…
Forget Blackadder, these are the guys Gove should be worrying about.
Ian West/PA
As Britain starts four years of commemorating the centenary of the First World War, Blackadder Goes Forth, first broadcast on BBC1 in 1989, has, bizarrely, taken centre stage. To rather less fanfare than…
Who you think you’re kidding, Mr Gove?
PA / Martin Keene
Karina Urbach, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Michael Gove must be off his head. In Germany any politician who tried giving professionals a history lecture would be considered a lunatic. German historians love to argue among themselves, and there…