Postcards from the Western Front Pilgrims, Veterans, and Tourists after the Great War

Mark Connelly's definitive and engaging study of the former Western Front examines how different and distinctive sub-communities - regional, ethnic and religious, civilian and armed forces - influenced the depth and strength of the visiting public's relationship with the battlefields, all the while comparing and contrasting this relationship with the viewpoint of the French and Belgian inhabitants of the devastated regions. Connelly draws from a vast archive a number of interlocking themes, including the lingering presence of the battlefields in the British domestic imagination, the often fraught experience of visiting the battlefields, memorials and cemeteries functioning as part of a historical testimony to wartime realities, and the interactions between visitors and the people living in these former fighting zones.
Focusing on French and Belgian sites, Connelly nevertheless provides insight into other major battlefields fought over by troops from the British Empire. Extensively illustrated with black and white photographs, Postcards from the Western Front offers a groundbreaking perspective on landscapes that rarely left anyone - whether tourist, inhabitant, veteran, or pilgrim - unmoved.