REVIEW: CALUM HENDERSON The new German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which arrived on Netflix last autumn, pulls no punches in its depiction of the savage violence of World War I. In the film,…
On 4 May 1917, the entrance to the tunnel on the Chemin des Dames collapsed following French shelling.
Calum Henderson explores how a new exhibition at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Missouri is illuminating the experiences of prisoners of war.
The discovery was made during renovation work at Stirling station in 2021, offering a fascinating snapshot into the experiences of serving soldiers.
REVIEW BY ANDREW MULHOLLAND It is a mistake to approach this book simply as a ‘German perspective’ on the history of the First World War. It is actually much more, in that Holger Afflerbach brings great breadth to his work,…
The new All Quiet on the Western Front will, I’m sure, be popular and, like the British feature film 1917 (directed by Sam Mendes), will bring the horror and futility of the war to a new generation.
A team of specialist divers secretly traced the final resting place of U-111.
REVIEW BY ANDREW MULHOLLAND Strategic history may seem dry or even daunting to some, but Robin Prior has broken new ground here. Not only has he tackled a huge subject in a different way, but he has presented his material…
In 1916, she was involved in the Battle of Jutland, the most significant naval battle of the First World War, and the only main fleet action between the German and British navies.
Richard Hodges has been visiting Sexten, where the alpine scenery still bears the traces of fighting in the First World War.
Underwater warfare came of age on 15 September 1914, when Germany’s U-21 became the first submarine to sink a ship with a self-propelled torpedo. The U-boat’s devastating surprise attack, off the Firth of Forth, sank the British cruiser HMS Pathfinder…
Calum Henderson explores fascinating examples of postcards from the First World War which feature in John Wilton's latest book.
As both of my grandfathers perished onboard Invincible at the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, I read your discussion of Admiral David Beatty (‘The worst commanders in history?’ MHM August/September 2022) with some interest. Invincible was based at Portsmouth,…
Production of All Quiet on the Western Front took place in the spring of 2021, with filming in Belgium, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
After the war, the fort briefly served as a peacetime garrison until the mid-1950s.
More than half a century after its publication, it is widely regarded as the inescapable starting point for scholars working on early 20th-century British naval history. What made Marder such an outstanding historian? Above all, it is his command of the primary sources.
What makes a good or bad military leader? Is it just the winning and losing of battles, or does personality also play a part? A new book looks at some of the most disastrous commanders down the centuries. Here, three historians explain their choices.
REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON. William Vicarage was just 20 years old when he sustained severe cordite burns aboard HMS Malaya during the Battle of Jutland in 1916. As well as extensive wounds to his hands and upper body, the able…
Over a career as one of Britain’s most prolific military historians, Sir Antony Beevor has produced some of the most compelling narratives of 20th-century conflict. Perhaps most famous for Stalingrad, Beevor has subsequently published a series of well-received studies of…
The early stages of Benediction (written and directed by Terence Davies) deal with this story in a very cursory way. There is no treatment of Sassoon (Jack Lowden) as a war hero. The distant conflict is covered by extremely poor-quality black-and-white archive.
One of the most tragic consequences of the First World War was the idea and the reality of ‘the missing’. All earlier wars had victims of which no trace was ever found, but the world’s first global industrialised conflict created…
They will now form part of the Imperial War Museum's First World War Collections.
While many historians drill deeper into their sources and produce more detailed and specialist works, it is excellent to find one of Britain’s best Second World War historians doing the opposite. Blood and Ruins is a vast and encyclopaedic view…
Fabrizio Bagatti has made a major contribution to Lawrence of Arabia studies with the publication of this volume. Until now, we have had only the edited selection of his military dispatches published by Malcolm Brown or the facsimile reprint of…
The passage of time reveals two things – the forgetfulness of human memory, and the clarity of hindsight – neither of which of course is a law. For the archaeology of modern conflict, in this case the First World War,…
Although the design was an amazing technological achievement for its day, it was little more than a very expensive propaganda weapon.
Millions of us grew up on stories of bravery among prisoners of war in the Second World War. What is less well known is that brutal treatment of British POWs was a feature of the 1914-18 conflict too. In all, 171,720 Tommies and their officers were captured during the First World War on the Western Front – from where they were allocated to one of 170 camps, dotted throughout Germany.
Joseph O’Neill lifts the lid on a hidden story of POW maltreatment.
This is the first of a planned three-part history of the First World War organised by theatre. The second volume will deal with the Eastern Front (including Italy and the Balkans), the third with the wider war (mainly the Middle…
Your views on the latest from Current Archaeology.
The initiative coincides with War Graves Week, from 21 – 28 May, promoted by the CWGC to raise awareness of wartime history within local communities and the work of the commission in maintaining that heritage.
The wreck of the Royal Navy’s first long-range diesel-powered submarine has been awarded protected status by the British government.
‘Grenade’ derives from the Old French pome grenate, on account of the bomblet’s similarity in shape to the pomegranate fruit.
He became known as the ‘Flying Sikh’ because he wore a specially designed helmet that fitted over his turban.
In the last year of WWI, airpower became a major factor – so much so that the British turned their air contingents, previously treated as adjuncts of the Army or the Navy into a unified RAF. Was the diversion of resources worth it?
In this authoritative new history, WWI historian Nick Lloyd goes against the widespread myth of the war of 1914-1918 as one of stupidity and pointlessness. Amid the mud and mire of the trenches, he argues, there was extensive innovation and…