The veterans' tale : British military memoirs of the Second World War

Summary: This is a unique account of the ways in which British veterans of the Second World War remembered, understood, and recounted their experiences of battle throughout the post-war period. Focusing on themes of landscape, weaponry, the enemy, and comradeship, Frances Houghton examines the imagery and language used by war memoirists to reconstruct and review both their experiences of battle and their sense of wartime self. Houghton also identifies how veterans' memoirs became significant sites of contest as former servicemen sought to challenge what they saw as unsatisfactory official, scholarly, and cultural representations of the Second World War in Britain. Her findings show that these memoirs are equally important both for the new light they shed on the memory and meanings of wartime military experience among British veterans, and for what they tell us about the cultural identity of military life-writing in post-war British society.

Record details

ISBN: 1108496911
ISBN: 9781108739061
ISBN: 9781108496919
ISBN: 1108756921
ISBN: 9781108756921
ISBN: 1108690165
ISBN: 9781108690164
Physical Description: 1 online resource (xi, 293 pages)
remote
Publisher: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 04 Jan 2019).
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Motive and the veteran-memoirist -- Penning and publishing the veterans' tale -- Landscape, nature, and battlefields -- Machines, weapons, and protagonists -- "Distance", killing, and the enemy -- Comradeship, leadership, and martial fraternity -- Selfhood and coming of age in veteran memoir -- History, cultural memory, and the veteran-memoirist.