Joining up in the Second World War: Enlistment, masculinity and the memory of the Great War (Cultural History of Modern War)

Morley, Joel

ISBN 10: 1526157233 / ISBN 13: 9781526157232

Published by Manchester University Press, 2025

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0004051538

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Joining up in the Second World War: Enlistment, masculinity and the memory of the Great War (Cultural History of Modern War)
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1526157233
• ISBN 13: 9781526157232
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

This book connects the First and Second World Wars. It uses oral histories and Mass Observation material to explore men’s attitudes to Second World War enlistment and the relationship they perceived between military service and masculinity, and how these were influenced by understandings of the First World War. Locating the cultural legacy of First World War in the subjectivities of men who participated in the Second World War demonstrates the breadth of sources that informed men’s understandings of the First World War in interwar Britain. Its cultural legacy was omnipresent and diverse, and informed young men’s attitudes and service preferences, but it reinforced Edwardian conceptions of wartime masculinity as often as it undermined them. Two decades after the First World War ended, they remained resilient in the subjective understandings of men who grew up in the Great War’s shadow.

About the Author

Joel Morley is an oral historian specialising in the cultural and social history of war and gender in twentieth-century Britain