The Home Front in Britain Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences since 1914

This collection of fourteen, academically rigorous and accessible chapters explores the British Home Front in the last 100 years since the outbreak of WW1. The wide range of case studies include war widows allowances, Landgirls, the role of factory inspectors in WW1 and canal boat women, national savings, Guernsey evacuees and clothes rationing in WW2.

The meaning and images of the British home and family in times of war are interrogated in the past and in contemporary culture to challenge prevalent myths of how working and domestic life shifted in times of national conflict. This volume is intended to encourage a reappraisal of the place of the Home Front in British conceptualisations of war and conflict.

Professor Maggie Andrews is a Professor of Cultural History at the University of Worcester, UK.

Dr Janis Lomas is an Independent Scholar and Previously Worked as a Social and Women's Historian at University of Birmingham, UK.

Introduction; Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas
1. The Idea and Ideal of Domesticity and Home in WW1; Maggie Andrews
2. A Personal Account of The Home Front; Angela Clare Smith
3. Soldiering on: War Widows in WW1 Britain; Janis Lomas
4. Mortality or Morality? Keeping Workers Safe in World War One; Anne Spurgeon
5. A Heroine at Home: The Housewife on the WW1 Home Front; Karen Hunt
6. Female Agricultural Workers in Wales in WW1; Thomas George
7. Ellen Wilkinson and Home Security; Paula Bartley
8. Guernsey Mothers and Children: Forgotten Evacuees; Gillian Mawson
9. The Home Front as a 'Moment' for Animals and Humans: Exploring the Animal - Human Relationship in Contemporary Diaries and Letters; Hilda Kean
10. The Weak and the Wicked: Non-Conscripted Masculinities in 1940s British Cinema; Paul Elliott
11. Rationing in WW2: Creativity and Buying to Last; Elspeth King and Maggie Andrews
12. The 'Idle Women': Breaking Gender Stereotypes on Britain's Inland Waterways During the Second World War; Barbara Hately-Broad and Bob Moore
13. 'Doing Your Bit': Women and the National Savings Movement in the Second World War; Rosalind Watkiss Singleton
14. Contemporary Images and Ideas of the Home Front; Maggie Andrews