The Great War haunted the British Empire. Shell shocked soldiers relived the war’s trauma through waking nightmares consisting of mutilated and grotesque figures. Modernist writers released memoirs condemning the war as a profane and disenchanting experience. Yet British and Dominion soldiers and their families also read prophecies about the coming new millennium, experimented with séances, and claimed to see the ghosts of their loved ones in dreams and in photographs. On the battlefields, they had premonitions and attributed their survival to angelic, psychic, or spiritual forces. For many, the war was an enchanting experience that offered proof of another world and the transcendental properties of the mind. Between 1914 and 1939, an array of ghosts lived in the minds of British subjects as they navigated the shocking toll that death in modern war exerted in their communities.
Price: £85.00
Pages: 336
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Cultural History of Modern War
Publication Date:
18 July 2023
ISBN: 9781526164971
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / 20th Century, Social and cultural history, HISTORY / Military / World War I, HISTORY / Social History, BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Spiritualism, Spiritualism, First World War
'This is a rich academic study... it shows an impressive skill in locating individual case studies to explore in both printed and archival materials in ways that can illuminate larger historical trajectories.'
Prof. Roger Luckhurst
'Drawing upon a range of archival sources as well as the voluminous relevant published literature from the period, Falcon has cast valuable new light on some familiar subjects. Haunted Britain will be welcomed by First World War historians exploring faith and religion, and also by those interested in the wider cultures of science and spiritualism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.'
Owen Davies, Journal of British Studies
Kyle Falcon is a historian specialising in the British Empire during the First World War. He is based in Ontario, Canada.
Introduction
1 Prophecies of war and peace: spiritualism and the new millennium
2 A psychic laboratory: numinous experiences and spiritualism on the Great War’s battlefield
3 An empire of sensation: telepathy, crisis apparitions and the moment of death on the home Front
4 Living with the ghosts of war: death and mourning in the séance room
5 The army of the living dead: spirit photography and the public denial of death
Conclusion
Index
