Fractured Loyalties

Using a rich body of primary sources including autobiographies, diaries, and letters, this survey reveals how upper middle-class men in early 20th-century Britain were socialized into class and gender roles in ways that fostered powerful affiliations with social institutions and ideologies. A closer look at case studies of key figures such as Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and W. H. R. Rivers, as well as lesser-known individuals such as the Liverpool businessman, Gypsiologist and volunteer soldier Scott Macfie, and the Communist literary critic Alick West, helps to answer the following questions:  How do individuals come to form political affiliations? and What are the origins of the bonds of attachment and loyalty which develop between individuals, political parties, social movements, and the nation state? Drawing on theories of nationalism, masculinity, and psychoanalysis, this study investigates the profound impact of the World War I, which for some offered an escape from or reconciliation of existing conflicts with family and nation, but for others subverted their existing loyalties, leading them to challenge the values within which they had been educated.

T. G. Ashplant is professor of social and cultural history in the interdisciplinary program in literature and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University. He is the author of Explorations in Cultural History and The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration.