Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    First World War Britain: 1914–1919
    First World War Britain: 1914–1919
    First World War Britain: 1914–1919
    Ebook153 pages1 hour

    First World War Britain: 1914–1919

    By Peter Doyle

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The First World War profoundly changed British society. The armed forces' need for mass recruitment saw the workforce severely depleted, with women stepping up to shoulder the burden; but nobody could ignore the social upheaval or the strains put upon daily life. With poverty a major issue at the outbreak of war, the extra wages put more food on the table for many families, in spite of rationing and shortages, and away from the front the nation prospered. The war intervened in all aspects of home life, and attacks from the sea and the air meant that civilians were caught up in 'total war'. Peter Doyle explores how British citizens met these challenges, looking at such aspects of daily life as clothing restrictions and popular arts, alongside broader issues like food shortages and industrial unrest.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJul 20, 2012
    ISBN9781782001218
    First World War Britain: 1914–1919
    Author

    Peter Doyle

    Peter Doyle is a geologist and well known military historian specialising in the impact of terrain on the outcome of battle, particularly in the Great War, as well as the British experience of war. He is Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary War Heritage Group and visiting Professor at University College London. More details can be found at www.peterdoylemilitaryhistory.com.

    Read more from Peter Doyle

    Related to First World War Britain

    Titles in the series (1)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Social History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Mildenhall Treasure

      Nov 5, 2021

      The Mildenhall Treasure
      2 min read

    • Article

      Battle Of Warsaw

      May 13, 2021

      Battle Of Warsaw
      3 min read

    • Article

      Ernest Shackleton

      Mar 11, 2022

      Ernest Shackleton
      3 min read

    • Article

      Frederick II

      Feb 28, 2020

      Frederick II
      7 min read

    • Article

      Napoleon's Death March

      Apr 25, 2019

      Napoleon's Death March
      10 min read

    • Article

      When Comes The Dawn? The Lightening Of Hoplite Panoply

      Mar 9, 2023

      When, exactly, the hoplite panoply became little more than chiton, aspis shield and helmet is difficult to pin down. We have seen that greaves seem to have fallen out of use before the Peloponnesian War, but the cloak remained (see AW XIII.1 and XIII

      1 min read

    • Article

      Chips, With Everything

      Oct 28, 2021

      Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries 1938-43 edited by Simon Heffer (Hutchinson, £35) Christopher Pincher is Minister of State for Housing DIARIES ARE CAPTIVATING, they tell us so much about so much. They magic up the mood behind the headlines of the t

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Philatelic Legacy Of A Doomed Dynasty

      Oct 8, 2021

      The Qajar dynasty ruled Iran from 1794 to 1925, uniting the country after a vicious civil war. It was a time when Iran sought to rebuild its influence in the region and to raise its international profile. But that meant European powers began to notic

      7 min read

    • Article

      Welcome

      Apr 25, 2019

      Welcome
      1 min read

    • Article

      No 10 Is Marching Through Cultural Institutions – And Making A Battleground Of The Arts | Charlotte Higgins

      Nov 8, 2021

      When the chair of the National Maritime Museum, Charles Dunstone, wrote to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to extend Dr Aminul Hoque’s trusteeship into a second four-year term, it was just a formality. The letter, written

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Crisis Manager

      Jan 20, 2022

      The Crisis Manager
      1 min read

    • Article

      How George V Won The War

      Sep 2, 2021

      How George V Won The War
      8 min read

    • Article

      2022 And All That - A History Of British Blunders

      Nov 16, 2022

      It was the worst humiliation since Suez but, somehow, Suez remains the gold standard for fiascoes. Liz Truss completed her premiership in record time, like a gatecrasher who, after stumbling around drunkenly smashing things for a few minutes, is quie

      3 min read

    • Article

      Choppy Waters

      Jul 6, 2023

      James Davey’s challenging alternative reading of Britain and its Royal Navy in the relatively unsuccessful war against revolutionary France opens fresh perspectives on a critical period in British history, highlighting the challenge of radical politi

      2 min read

    • Article

      Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER

      Apr 16, 2020

      Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
      9 min read

    • Article

      1921 A Brave New World?

      Dec 28, 2021

      1921 A Brave New World?
      9 min read

    • Article

      Lords, Leaders And Luminaries

      Aug 4, 2022

      Lords, Leaders And Luminaries
      5 min read

    • Article

      Making Of A Modern Monarchy

      Apr 29, 2021

      Making Of A Modern Monarchy
      5 min read

    • Article

      Long Live The King!

      May 12, 2023

      George Frederick Ernest Albert, the grandson of Queen Victoria, became George V, King of the United Kingdom and King-Emperor of the British Empire on 6 May, 1910, after the death of his father King Edward VII. King George V’s Coronation took place at

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for First World War Britain

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      First World War Britain - Peter Doyle

      uniform.

      PREFACE

      Poppies, mud, shrapnel, heavy green clouds of gas, tangled wire, unbearable noise and twisted, torn, wrecked bodies: unmistakeable images that conjure up the Western Front, 1914–18, to all of us. Almost a century on, the nightmare of the war remains vivid in our imaginations.

      Soldiers returning home from the trenches, on leave or invalided out of the army, found themselves in a world that had little understanding of what they had lived through. Many struggled to adjust to ‘normality’.

      Yet the war could not have been fought without a huge effort back home, and the needs of the first ‘total war’ brought radical change to many aspects of life in Britain. As young men went abroad en masse to fight and die, their jobs had to be filled, taxes and all kinds of charitable efforts had to be raised, extraordinary demands for supplies and materiel had to be fulfilled, morale had to be maintained and somehow, family life had to go on. Meanwhile, the country that had a proud record of not having been threatened by war or invasion for a century suffered a new threat – aerial bombardment from the German zeppelins – while U-boat attacks meant that imports were cut, shortages loomed and prices, especially food prices, soared. The effects were not so dramatic as those at the Front, but they were just as profound.

      The legacy of the revolutionary changes in the power of government to determine the economy lives with us still, as do the licensing laws which restricted opening hours at pubs and were inteneded to boost productivity. Many charitable activities were developed during the war, not to mention medical advances including the beginnings of plastic surgery and the beginnings of modern psychology.

      The well-known military historian Peter Doyle provides a ideal guide to those troubling times, investigating the effects of war on family life, work, entertainment, education and many other dimensions in a rounded, brilliantly illustrated survey of the war years.

      Peter Furtado

      Series Editor

      The ‘Edwardian Summer’: metaphor for the end of an era in August 1914. Britain carries on as normal at Southend-on-Sea in the last month of peace before the first of war.

      BRITAIN IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR

      BRITAIN had undergone many changes in the years before the start of the Great War (as the First World War was known at the time, and as it is coming to be known again). By late Victorian times, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had extended its reach across the globe. As every schoolchild knew, the sun was never likely to set on the British Empire, its red splash depicted on maps across five continents signifying British territories that extended into hemispheres north and south, east and west. With India the jewel in the crown of the Empire, and possessions and colonies far and wide, the imperial city of London had become a truly global city. Britain was at the height of its influence.

      With the ascent of Edward VII to the throne in 1901, there was a distinct change in atmosphere. Though society still had the rigid class structure so evident during the reign of Victoria, the Edwardian era was an interval of positivity, with a ‘playboy’ king leading a fashionable upper-class elite. There were changes for the lower classes too; the new Liberal government of 1906 swept away old laissez-faire attitudes to welfare, summoning changes that would see the birth of an incipient welfare state. This atmosphere would continue through to the eve of the Great War; and perhaps because of this (even with King George V coming to the throne in 1910), it is usual to consider the Edwardian era as extending to the outbreak of world war.

      If the late Edwardian, pre-war, period was marked by the consolidation of Britain’s global influence, it was also marked by a consideration of its relations within wider Europe. Hitherto typically isolationist, and dependent upon its navy for defence, Britain had been aloof from European politics for decades. Yet with Queen Victoria’s wider family being distinctly European in character (the marriages of her nine children tying them into royal elites from Russia and Germany to Norway, from Romania to Spain), it is not surprising that Edward’s association with the fashionable elite of European society would help build bonds and alliances. In a last major act of international diplomacy by a British monarch, the king would be a driving force in the development of the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France in 1904 (and a Triple Entente between Britain, France and Russia in 1907), a bond of friendship that would have a significant impact on Britain’s direction in war just ten years later. It would also be significant in terms of Britain’s relationship with another neighbour – Germany.

      The British Empire – a splash of red across the map – and its enemies, 1914.

      Three super-dreadnoughts. The British navy was seen as the primary strength of Britain, its main defence.

      Though close links with Germany had been mooted in the early years of the king’s reign (with Edward’s sister, Princess Victoria, being the empress of Germany until her death in 1901, and mother of Kaiser Wilhelm II), Edward had turned his back on the idea of a triple alliance of the three major European nations. Kaiser Wilhelm II was a cousin of King George V but there was little in the way of family warmth expressed in his direction. The kaiser was just a little too fond of grand titles and fancy uniforms for the conservative British. Instead, the British press was generally antagonistic towards Germany, with depictions of stereotypical swaggering, sabre-rattling, Prussian militarists. Suspicious also of German intentions, the British government took particular exception to the developing arms race created by the kaiser’s desire to build an effective navy. This was a distinct warning shot across the bows, a growing threat to British supremacy of the seas that could not be left unchallenged. Within this atmosphere there was much scaremongering over possible German invasion plans, and much antagonism directed across the channel by the new British tabloid press. With William Le Queux’s fictional tale, The

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1