Helen B. McCartney

The popular image of the British soldier in the First World War is of a passive victim, caught up in events beyond his control, and isolated from civilian society. This book offers a different vision of the soldier's experience of war. Using letters and official sources relating to Liverpool units, Helen McCartney shows how ordinary men were able to retain their civilian outlook and use it to influence their experience in the trenches. These citizen soldiers came to rely on local, civilian loyalties and strong links with home to bolster their morale and challenge those in command.

The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War

Citizen Soldiers

Geoff Dyer

Hew Strachan

Chloe Dewe Mathews

Commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art at the Universty of Oxford as part of 14-18 Nov WWI Centenary Art Commissions, Shot at Dawn is a new body of work by the photographer Chloe Dewe Mathew that focuses on the sites at which British, French and Belgian troops were executed for cowardice and desertion between 1914 and 1918. The project comprises images of twenty-three locations at which individuals were shot or held in the period leading up to their executions and all were taken as close to the exact time of execution as possible and at approximately the same time of year.

Helen B. McCartney

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