Wednesday 22nd January 2025
7.30pm
Freshford Memorial Hall
Dr Andrew Swift has written extensively on the Victorian and Edwardian periods, having studied English literature at Oxford and McMaster Universities, and the history of English Art of the 18th and 19th centuries at Birmingham University. He is a member of the Bristol Industrial Archaeological Society (BIAS).
Dr. Swift will describe the Great War’s impact on one English community the city of Bath. Over 1800 men from the Bath area died in the Great War. Their average age was 27. Somerset men fought battles not only on the Western Front, but in Mesopotamia and Palestine. At home, there were battles between jingoists and conscientious objectors. While soldiers struggled against terrible odds in the mud of Flanders, their families battled against poverty and hunger caused by rising prices and rationing. Bath’s men went to war and the war came to the city. There were three aircraft factories in the city, as well as factories turning out shells, torpedoes and experimental tanks for the war effort. Tens of thousands of soldiers were billeted in the city; tens of thousands more were cared for in a purpose-built war hospital. Interweaving letters from the front with stories of life at home, Dr Swift creates a compelling picture of those terrible years and, although the story is of one community, it was a story repeated, with minor variations, in hundreds of other towns and cities as they lived through the time when all roads led to France.
Members free Visitors £3.00 All welcome