Military

This volume exposes at once the nature of World War I and its depth and duration in personal lives. Contributors, including historians, museum professionals and cultural heritage specialists, grapple with the complexities of interpreting and representing the private experience and costs of the war in museums and historical practice. The Great War of 1914-1918 was fought on the battlefield, on the sea and in the air, and in the heart. Museums Victoria’s exhibition World War I: Love and Sorrow exposed not just the nature of that war, but its depth and duration in personal and familial lives. Hailed by eminent scholar Jay Winter as "one of the best which the centenary of the Great War has occasioned", the exhibition delved into the war’s continuing emotional claims on descendants and on those who encounter the war through museums today. Contributors to this volume, drawn largely from the exhibition’s curators and advisory panel, grapple with the complexities of recovering and presenting difficult histories of the war. In eleven essays the book presents a new, more sensitive and nuanced narrative of the Great War, in which families and individuals take centre stage. Together they uncover private reckonings with the costs of that experience, not only in the years immediately after the war, but in the century since. Hailed as ‘a remarkable way of re-imagining the First World War’ (Michael McKernan), the exhibition also delved into the war’s continuing emotional claims on descendants and on those who encounter the war through museums today. The memory of World war One is especially acute in Australia due to the iconic and tragic battle of Gallipoli The book takes a fully global perspective on World War I and is not limited to the western front