This book seeks to place children and young people centrally within the study of the contemporary British home front, its cultural representations and its place in the historical memory of the First World War.

Introduction- Maggie Andrews, N.C. Fleming, Marcus Morris.- Part I: Childhood in War.- 1. ‘Birmingham clapped her hands with the rest of the world, welcoming the signs of peace’: Working-Class Urban childhoods in Birmingham, London, and Greater Manchester during the First World War- Rebecca Ball.- 2. The radical responses made by women in Manchester, during the First World War, to the 'special problems of child life accentuated by the war'- Alison Ronan.- 3. Childhood Interrupted: Work and Schooling in Rural Worcestershire- Maggie Andrews, Anna Muggeridge, Hayley Carter and Lisa Cox-Davies.- Part II: Youth in War.- 4. Fears of the dark: young people and the cinema during World War One- Melanie Tebbutt.- 5. The Navy League, the Rising Generation and the First World War- N.C. Fleming.- 6. ‘Girls Who Would Fight’: Young Women and the Call to Arms during the First World War- Marcus Morris.- 7. ‘It Didn’t Worry Me a Bit’: Coming of Age in London in the First World War- Ruth Percy.- 8. ‘Students, Service and Sacrifice: Wartime Education, Adolescent Experiences and Understandings of the First World War’- Keith Vernon and Oliver Wilkinson.- Part III: Memories and Representations.- 9. Women at the Front and class enemies reconciled: Anachronism in First World War children’s novels in the last four decades- Jane Rosen.- 10. Watching and Remembering the Great War: The First World War, Young People, and Television as Sight of Memory, 1968-2014- Sam Edwards.- 11. Problematizing Palatable Pasts: Histories and Children in Britain’s First World War Commemoration- Maggie Andrews.

“The contributors should be commended for put­ting a notable dent in the historiography. … this collection provides a wealth of insight into the experiences of young people in World War I. Melanie Tebbutt’s analysis of how children experienced the darkened space of the cinemas is especially innovative.” (Ashley Henrickson, The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Vol. 15 (3), 2022)

Brings together new research by emerging and established scholars who, through a series of tightly focussed case studies, introduce a range of new histories Sheds light on the multiple ways in which the First World War shaped, disrupted and interrupted childhood in Britain Illuminates the selectivity of the portrayal of the conflict within the more typical national narratives