Module Directory

This final year module examines and compares the experience of the British people during the Second World War, the myth-making that was a part of this experience, and the shifting cultural memory of the war in Britain from 1945 to the present day.

The module makes extensive use of the Mass Observation Online Archive (available online via the Albert Sloman library) to examine the British experience of war and to consider how people experienced and represented the war themselves.

The aims of this module are::

• To introduce students to models of, and debates regarding, the formation and circulation of cultural memory.


• To introduce students to a range of primary sources in order to study the experience and the cultural memory of the Second World War in Britain.


• To introduce students to the Mass Observation Archive, and enable them to explore and understand the range of writing to be found there, and what this tells us about the experience of living in Second World War Britain.


• To enable students to explore both the experience and the cultural memory of the Second World
  War in Britain, considering which experiences were represented, and which were marginalised, both during the war and subsequently.


• To enable students to develop a level of expertise appropriate to the final year of their degree in
  the social and cultural history, and the cultural memory of, Britain in the Second World War.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Analyse and debate the historiography of the experience and cultural memory of Britain in the Second World War.


2. Read and analyse a range of primary sources regarding the experience and cultural memory of Britain in the Second World War.


3. Demonstrate familiarity with the major events of Second World War Britain, and with the ways these have been represented in popular culture during the war and since.

This is a full year Module that, in the first term, focuses on the war years, introducing students to the social and cultural history of the war, to the social survey organisation Mass Observation, and to the processes by which wartime culture created the enduring myths of Dunkirk, the Blitz, the Battle of Britain and the People's War. The module uses Mass Observation alongside other primary sources to consider which stories became a part of these myths, and which were excluded or marginalised.

In the second term the focus turns to the cultural memory of the war since 1945. Students are introduced to concepts and theories of cultural memory that they will go on to apply to representations of the war that are studied. The memory of the war is traced from 1945 to the current day, with themes examined including the popularity of the war film, the mobilisation of the Second World War in Britain's subsequent wars, memories of war in Cold War and post-Cold War Europe, the growth of the wartime anniversary, museums and memorials, and the 'memory wars' that have been a central aspect of the Brexit debate since 2016.

As a final year, 30 credit module, the emphasis is on the analysis of primary sources and a detailed engagement each week with key secondary sources. Students are expected to familiarise themselves with the historical period or event under examination each week in order to enable to focused analysis, debate and discussion.

Introductory reading

• Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (1991).


• Angus Calder, The People`s War (1969).


• Mark Connolly, We Can Take It! Britain and the Memry of the Second World War (2004)


• James Hinton, Nine Wartime Lives. Mass Observation and the Making of the Modern Self (2010).


• Lucy Noakes & Juliette Pattinson (eds.) British Cultural Memory and the Second World


• War (2013).


• Dan Todman, Britain's War Volume 1: Into Battle (2016). Dan Todman, Britain's War Volume 2: A New World (2020).

This module will be delivered via:

• Lectures.
• Seminars.