Download PDF by Stephen Heathorn: Haig and Kitchener in Twentieth-Century Britain:

Lord Kitchener and Lord Haig are enormous figures of the 1st global battle. Their reputations, either of their lifetimes and after their deaths, were attacked and defended, scrutinized and contested. they've been depicted in movie, print and public memorials in Britain and the broader international, and new biographies of either males seem to this present day. the cloth representations of Haig and Kitchener have been formed, used and manipulated for respectable and well known ends by way of a number of teams at varied occasions throughout the 20th century. the aim of this learn isn't really to find the genuine person, nor to assault or shield their reputations, relatively it really is an exploration of the way either males were depicted considering that their deaths and to think about what this tells us in regards to the nature and that means of First global struggle commemoration. whereas Haig's illustration was once extra contested prior to the second one international warfare than was once Kitchener's, with a number of constituencies attempting to model and use Haig's reminiscence - the govt, the British Legion, ex-servicemen themselves, and bereaved households - it used to be most likely much less contested, yet overwhelmingly extra destructive, than Kitchener's after the second one global warfare. The booklet sheds gentle at the suggestion of 'heroic' masculinity - wondering, specifically, the measure to which similar to the typical soldier changed that of the excessive commander within the well known mind's eye - and explores how the army background within the 20th century got here into collision with the tradition of modernity. It additionally contributes to ongoing debates in British historiography and to the bigger debates over the social building of reminiscence, the complex relation among what's thought of 'heritage' and 'history', and the necessity for historians to be delicate and responsive to the interconnections among historical past and background and their contexts.