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

Lord Kitchener and Lord Haig are enormous figures of the 1st global warfare. 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 fabric representations of Haig and Kitchener have been formed, used and manipulated for respectable and well known ends through quite a few teams at varied occasions in the course of the 20th century. the aim of this research isn't to find the true person, nor to assault or shield their reputations, relatively it truly is an exploration of the way either males were depicted when you consider that their deaths and to think about what this tells us in regards to the nature and that means of First international battle commemoration. whereas Haig's illustration was once extra contested ahead of the second one international conflict than was once Kitchener's, with a number of constituencies attempting to type and use Haig's reminiscence - the govt., the British Legion, ex-servicemen themselves, and bereaved households - it was once most likely much less contested, yet overwhelmingly extra adverse, than Kitchener's after the second one global battle. The booklet sheds gentle at the proposal of 'heroic' masculinity - wondering, particularly, the measure to which just like the typical soldier changed that of the excessive commander within the renowned mind's eye - and explores how the army history 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 development of reminiscence, the difficult relation among what's thought of 'heritage' and 'history', and the necessity for historians to be delicate and aware of the interconnections among history and heritage and their contexts.