Merchants of Hope: British Middlebrow Writers and the First World War, 1919 1939

This study examines fictional recreations of the First World War in the interwar years and the phenomenal success of one play, Sheriff's Journey's End. The author challenges the notion of a 'modern' memory generated by the First World War by arguing that middlebrow texts formulated a set of images and ideas that eclipsed the wartime upheaval and imputed conservative 'meanings' to the collective memory.