My most recent academic article explores the role of postcards in the maintenance of relationships between combatants and civilians during the First World War. By drawing on untapped archival material found during my wider research into the morale of English infantrymen, it concentrates on the multiple uses of this medium in correspondence between the Western and Home Fronts.
In the early twentieth century postcards the most expansive form of Edwardian mass media and they help us understand how the Great War was experienced and internalised. Following the ‘cultural turn’ in military history it has become increasingly apparent that the gulf between those fighting and those left at home was much narrower than previously assumed. My work seeks to chart the variety of ways in which postcards helped to bridge this divide.
This is the synopsis of an article 'A War Imagined: Postcards and the Maintenance of Long-Distance Relationships during the Great War' published recently in SAGE's War in History, Vol. 28 Issue 2 (April 2021), pp. 301-332.
The full article can be read here (paywall).
The accepted version of this manuscript can be accessed here.
