Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War ed. by Maggie Andrews, N. C. Fleming, and Marcus Morris

Abstract

Reviewed by: Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War ed. by Maggie Andrews, N. C. Fleming, and Marcus Morris Ashley Henrickson Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War. Edited by Maggie Andrews, N. C. Fleming, and Marcus Morris. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. xiii + 257 pp. Hardcover $119.99, paper $84.99. Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War explores the experiences of young people during the war and how the conflict has been presented to young people in the century that followed. The edited collection was developed from a 2015 conference at Manchester Metropolitan University titled "Being Young in World War One." Editors Maggie Andrews, N. C. Fleming, and Marcus Morris have broadly defined both children and youth (including people up to the age of twenty) and welcomed essays that explore the diverse perspectives and experiences of young people. The editors aptly note that the collection does not and cannot cover the entirety of young people's experiences; however, the contributors should be commended for putting a notable dent in the historiography. The chapters cover many different topics, including children's and young people's experiences in education, the workplace, and organizations like the Navy League. Examining such a breadth of topics inevitably means that the authors describe numerous and sometimes contradictory wartime experiences. For example, in her chapter, Ruth Percy suggests that young, working-class women viewed the war as a time of opportunity rather than a time of loss and sorrow. Conversely, Melanie Tebbutt describes how young people often found refuge from the sadness of war in darkened movie theatres. Marcus Morris illustrates yet another unique experience by drawing attention to the desires of some young women to subvert gender norms and fight on the front lines. These varied descriptions of young people's experiences may appear inconsistent, but as Maggie Andrews, Hayley Carter, Lisa Cox-Davies, and Anna Muggeridge explain in their chapter, "there were numerous home fronts just as there were numerous battlefronts," and furthermore, "a national narrative of the conflict, even in relation to children, is not the national narrative" (55). By highlighting a variety of perspectives, this edited collection embraces the inevitable complexity of wartime and childhood. [End Page 441] The collection works to center the experiences of children and young people in a field where their experiences are often studied only in relation to other histories. In doing so, the authors demonstrate how the history of childhood helps paint a more complete picture of the past. For example, by focusing on the experiences of urban children, Rebecca Ball's chapter challenges the belief that the home front was a predominantly female space and questions the assumption that relationships between civilians and soldiers were largely defined by separation. The latter half of the collection examines contemporary understandings of the war and children's place within it, along with ways that the war was presented to later generations. Jane Rosen considers how children's novels produced over the past four decades preserve myths about the war in an attempt to tell morally instructive tales. Sam Edwards discusses how the war has been portrayed and commemorated through television. The collection concludes with a fascinating chapter by Maggie Andrews that will interest both academic and public historians. Andrews reviews the numerous accommodations that were undertaken to make the centennial commemorations of the First World War palatable for consumption by young people in the United Kingdom. She outlines the various political, historiographic, and economic factors that shaped and ultimately limited the histories of the war that were shared with young people. Overall, this collection provides a wealth of insight into the experiences of young people in World War I. Melanie Tebbutt's analysis of how children experienced the darkened space of the cinemas is especially innovative. As a whole, the book demonstrates that growing up during a time of conflict had enormous effects on young people's lives; however, these effects were diverse and sometimes contradictory. Ashley Henrickson Know History Inc. Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press