A War Imagined
The First World War and English Culture
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage
Published:12th Mar '92
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Between the opulent Edwardian years and the 1920s the First World War opens like a gap in time. England after the war was a different place; the arts were different; history was different; sex, society, class were all different.
Samuel Hynes examines the process of that transformation. He explores a vast cultural mosaic comprising novels and poetry, music and theatre, journalism, paintings, films, parliamentary debates, public monuments, sartorial fashions, personal diaries and letters.
Told in rich detail, this penetrating account shatters much of the received wisdom about the First World War. It shows how English culture adapted itself to the needs of killing, how our stereotypes of the war gradually took shape and how the nations thought and imagination were profoundly and irretrievably changed.
It is cultural history of a sweeping order... which can be savoured for its profusion of exhibits as well as for its ambitious thesis... A teeming book full of learning and humanity. -- C. J. Fox * Independent *
Makes tremendous sense... The wholly coherent effect of Hynes's study is all the more notable for the disintegrated nature of his material... A greatly rewarding study of how culture was dumbfounded. -- Mick Imlah * The Times Literary Supplement *
ISBN: 9780712650410
Dimensions: 234mm x 153mm x 29mm
Weight: 563g
528 pages