Cinema on the Front Line

Cinema on the Front Line offers the first comprehensive history and analysis of how the medium of cinema intersected with the lives of British soldiers during the First World War. Documenting the use of cinema from domestic recruitment drives to make-shift theatrical venues established on the front line and then in convalescent hospitals and camps the book provides evidence of the previously unacknowledged importance of cinema as recreational support and entertainment for soldiers living through the trauma of the first world war. Chris Grosvenor makes extensive use of war diaries and other military records to foreground the voices and perspectives of British soldiers themselves.