A groundbreaking volume that represents the first examination of cultural production amongst Italian prisoners of warCaptivity and Creativity explores the artistic and material production by Italian prisoners of war (POWs) and some civilian internees who were captured by the Western Allies in 1940–43 and detained in prison camps scattered across Africa, Australia, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States during World War II. Twelve chapters discuss...

What is often held to be Britain's 'finest hour' – the Second World War – was not experienced so uniformly across the British Isles. On the margins, the war was endured in profoundly different ways. While D-Day or Dunkirk is embedded in British collective memory, how many Britons can recall that Finns were interned on the Isle of Man, that enemy soldiers developed British infrastructure in Orkney, or that British subjects were sent to concentration camps from Guernsey? Such experiences, ta...

In recent years Anzac an idea as much as an actual army corps has become the dominant force within Australian history, overshadowing everything else. The commemoration of Anzac Day is bigger than ever, while Remembrance Day, VE Day, VP Day and other military anniversaries grow in significance each year. Pilgrimages to Gallipoli, the Somme and Kokoda are commonplace and popular military history dominates the bestseller lists. Anzac has seemingly become a sacred, untouchable element of the n...

An in-depth historical study of Nova Scotia's role in WWI and its lingering impact on the region, its people, and its economy.Though the First World War ended in 1918, it continued to haunt Canada for generations. In Nova Scotia at War, 1915-1919, historian Brian Douglas Tennyson examines what was, for the people of Canada, an unprecedented period collective military trauma. As Tennyson demonstrates, the war effort didn't end with the brave soldiers and sa...

Australian history has changed drastically over the last fifty years and has found itself at the centre of heated and consuming public debates.So how do historians themselves read this history? Where do they see themselves in these momentous shifts in historical reading and writing? With contributions from prominent historians including Marilyn Lake, Tom Griffiths, Peter Stanley and Ann Curthoys, Australian History Now offers revealing and refreshing accounts of the ways A...

Canada From Afar is the fruit of the remarkable flowering of obituary writing in the London Daily Telegraph during the past ten years. These lively portraits of Canadians are informed, witty, sometimes quirky, occasionally iconoclastic.They include royal courtiers, politicians, businessmen, soldiers, sailors, airmen, scientists, explorers, novelists, artists, and even journalists. Among the prominent Canadians viewed from afar are persons such as Margaret Laurence, Joey Smallwood, K.C. Irv...

An accomplished Scottish journalist, soldier, head of intelligence, and Member of Parliament, John Buchan (1875-1940) is best known for penning thrillers such as The Thirty-Nine Steps. However, as Canada's 15th governor general (1935-40), Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, played a significant leadership role as a statesman and diplomat.Buchan was the first governor general appointed after the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which gave Canada constitutional equality with Britain. ...

Raise a glass for an Anzac. Run for an Anzac. Camp under the stars for an Anzac. Is there anything Australians won't do to keep the Anzac legend at the centre of our national story?But standing firm on the other side of the Anzac enthusiasts is a chorus of critics claiming that the appetite for Anzac is militarising our history and indoctrinating our children. So how are we to make sense of this struggle over how we remember the Great War?Anzac, the Una...

The First World War appears as a fault line in Britain’s twentieth-century history. Between August 1914 and November 1918 the titanic struggle against Imperial Germany and her allies consumed more people, more money and more resources than any other conflict that Britain had hitherto experienced. For the first time, it opened up a Home Front that stretched into all parts of the British polity, society and culture, touching the lives of every citizen regardless of age, gender and class: veg...

With her soft linen head scarf and white apron emblazoned with a red cross, the Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, or VAD, has become a romantic emblem of the First World War. This Small Army of Women draws on diaries, letters, and interviews to tell the forgotten story of the nearly two thousand women from Canada and Newfoundland who volunteered to “do their bit” at home and overseas.Middle-class and well-educated but largely untrained, VADs were excluded from Canadian milit...

This book is volume one of a two-part series (volumes sold separately). Taken together, the two volumes of A Philosopher at War examine the political thought of the philosopher and archaeologist, R.G. Collingwood, against the background of the First and Second World Wars. Collingwood served in Admiralty Intelligence during the First World War and although he was not physically robust enough to play an active role in the Second World War, he was swift to condemn the policies of appeasement ...

Head-aches. Dizziness. Can't sleep. Bad dreams (never have been released). The rice jungle had some compensation to some of us who just don't seem to make a success of our return - ROBERT, A RETURNED POWThis landmark and compelling book follows the stories of 15,000 Australian prisoners of war from the moment they were released by the Japanese at the end of World War II. Their struggle to rehabilitate themselves and to win compensation and acknowledgement from their own co...