Mar 1, 2025
What happens when a late-twentieth-century detective novelist develops strong opinions about the First World War?
This month Angus, Jessica and Chris
discuss Reginald Hill's The Wood Beyond (1995) and the
short story 'Silent Night' from the collection A
Candle for Christmas (2023). Along the way, we consider the
significance of the genealogy boom to the historiography of the
war, the politics of the Shot at Dawn campaign and the tradition of
novelists inventing fictional regiments.
References:
Midsummer Murders
The Sweeney
Who Do You Think You
Are?
Not Forgotten
(2005-2009)
Pat Barker, Regeneration
(1991)
Sebastian Japrisot, A Very Long
Engagement (1994)
Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong
(1993)
Blackadder Goes Forth
(1983)
The Monocled Mutineer
(1986)
Alan Clark, The
Donkeys (1961)
Reginald Hill, Arms and the
Women (1999)
________. On Beulah
Height (1998)
________. Recalled to
Life (1992)
________. Exit
Lines (1984)
Helen McCartney, Citizen Soldiers:
The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War (2005)
Peter Simkins, Kitchener's Army:
The Raising of the New Armies, 1914-1916 (2007)
Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British
Society and the First World War (1965)
Susan Grayzel, Women's Identities
at War (1999)
Tammy Proctor, Female Intelligence:
Women and Espionage in the First World War (2003)
Alison Fell, Women as Veterans in
Britain and France after the First World War (2018)
Oh! What a lovely podcast, Black
Hand Gang
Oh! What a lovely podcast, The
Warm Hands of Ghosts