The Great War, Memory and Ritual: Commemoration in the City and East London, 1916-1939(Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series)

This detailed case study of a part of London shows how both the survivors and the bereaved sought to come to terms with the losses and implications of the Great War. The modern idea that the Great War was regarded as a futile waste of life by British society in the disillusioned 1920s and 1930s is here called into question by Mark Connelly. Through a detailed local study of a district containing a wide variety of religious, economic and social variations, he shows how both the survivors and the bereaved came to terms with the losses and implications of the Great War. His study illustrates the ways in which communitiesas diverse as the Irish Catholics of Wapping, the Jews of Stepney and the Presbyterian ex-patriate Scots of Ilford, thanks to the actions of the local agents of authority and influence - clergymen, rabbis, councillors, teachers and employers - shaped the memory of their dead and created a very definite history of the war. Close focus on the planning of, fund-raising for, and erection of war memorials expands to a wider examination of how those memorials became a focus for a continuing need to remember, particularly each year on Armistice Day. Mark Connelly is Professor of Modern British Military History, University of Kent.

Table of Contents:
Introduction The City, East London and metropolitan Essex War shrines: the origins of the war memorials movement War memorials in places of worship: seeking solace in religion The alternative bonds of community: war memorials in placesof work, schools, colleges and clubs Civic war memorials: public pride and private grief Laying the foundations, 1919-1921 The years rich in imagery, 1922-1929 The years of flux, 1930-1935 Into battle, 1936-1939 The East End Jewish ex-service movement Epilogue Bibliography

About the Author :
Professor of Modern British Military History, University of Kent

Review :
Local historians will relish the way contrasting case studies are developed as a powerful means of analysis, using an array of sources including newspapers, council records, church, school, business and hospital archives, parish and political magazines and pamphlets, memoirs and oral histories, photos and war memorials..A provocative and important book.it remains a valuable read. A fascinating, nuanced account of the manner in which the characters and communities in one corner of south-eastern England shaped the forms and styles of memorials erected in the years following the Armistice.... Highly recommended. An excellent piece of original research, and an engaging study of how the fallen of the Great War were remembered through observance and memorial. A very good and very readable detailed case study. The war memorials of the 1914-1918 war are to be found everywhere in the British Isles....Through the meticulous scholarship of Mark Connelly, we can once again hear the voices of those who created them. A deep knowledge of memoirs, newspaper files, and local archives enables Connelly to show the communitarian codes that underlay the war memorial movement as well as the conflicts and divisions these activities occasioned.