Forever England

When war broke out in 1914 conscription seemed unnecessary: there was no shortage of volunteers ready to lay down their lives for England. Caroline Dakers explores exactly what England meant to the men and women who fought died survived. She suggests that with a little subliminal help from literature art and propaganda the British volunteer whether factory worker farm hand or public school boy felt that he was fighting for a bucolic vision of old Englandvillage church meadow and carthorse rather than city factory commerce and motor car. Drawing on a wide range of unpublished papers and family archives Dakers recreates the world of the countryside at war through chapters on agriculture (literally ''the home front'') and life and death in the manor house vicarage school and farm. This is the most complete picture yet of the impact of the World War I on rural England; a war which if only in the ubiquitous village war memorials still reverberates today.