Oh! What a lovely podcast

What happens when a Sunday night crime caper takes the history of the First World War seriously?

In this episode Jessica, Chris and Angus talk about the cult Australian television series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. We discuss class in interwar Australia, what it meant to be a conscientious objector and why it might be a mistake to admit to bribery in front of a policeman in the third of our series on representations of the First World War in television crime dramas.

References:

Jessica Meyer, ‘Matthew's Legs and Thomas's Hand: Watching Downton Abbey as a First World War Historian’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, Dec 2018, vo. 16, No. 1 : pp. 78-93.

Kerry Greenwood, Murder and Mendelssohn (2013)

Kerry Greenwood, Murder on a Midsummer Night (2008)

Dorothy L. Sayers, the Peter Wimsey novels

P.G. Wodehouse, the Blandings novels

Helen Smith, Masculinity, Class and Same-Sex Desire in Industrial England, 1895-1957 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Dad’s Army, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branded_(Dad%27s_Army)

Ian Whitehead, Doctors in the Great War (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2013; first published Leo Cooper, 1999).

‘Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries Concept Document’, https://www.abc.net.au/tv/phrynefisher/classroom/MissFisher_ConceptDocument.pdf

Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man (1934); The Thin Man (1934) directed by W.S. Van Dyke

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery episodes:

Season 1, episode 3, ‘The Green Mill Murder’
Season 1, episode 4, ‘Death at Victoria Dock’
Season 1, episode 7, ‘Murder at Montparnasse’

Season 2, episode 2, ‘Death Comes Knocking’

Season 3, episode 4, ‘Blood and Money’
Season 3, episode 5, ‘Death and Hysteria’
Season 3, episode 6, ‘Death at the Grand’
Season 3, episode 8, ‘Death Do Us Part’

Did the First World War inspire organised crime in inter-war Britain?

In this episode we talk to Emma Hanna (University of Kent) about the British crime-drama series Peaky Blinders and how the war service of the main characters may have further brutalised the gangsters as they negotiate the harsh realities of postwar life. Along the way we discuss the difference in experience between sappers and infantry, different manifestations of 'shellshock', and whether the series is a love letter to Birmingham.

References

How has the First World War been translated by German popular culture?

In this episode, Angus, Chris and Jessica are joined by Dr Hilary Potter to discuss the book and television series, Babylon Berlin. We discuss sibling rivalry, the New Woman and prisoners of war as we explore the different ways in which the books and the programme represent Weimar Germany.

References
Kriegsgefangen in Skipton – Raikeswood camp

What is the relationship between war and romance?

In this episode, Jessica, Chris and Angus talk to Vanda Wilcox (NYU Paris) about the romance novels of Georgette Heyer and how she used her perception of the First World War to write about the Napoleonic Wars. Along the way we discuss women’s magazines, swearing in wartime and why the Duke of Wellington may or may not be like Sir Douglas Haig.

References:
An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer
The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer
The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer
'Georgette Heyer, Wellington's Army and the First World War' in Georgette Heyer, History, and Historical Fiction edited by Samantha Rayner and Kim Wilkins, UCL Press (due 2020)
Kloester, Jennifer, Georgette Heyer. Biography of a Bestseller (Random House, 2011)
Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities by Graham Dawson
‘The Blood of Our Sons’: Men, Women and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship in the Great War by Nicoletta Gullace
‘Best Boys and Aching Hearts: The rhetoric of romance as social control in wartime magazines for young women’ by Carol Acton
Strachan, Hew, Wellington’s Legacy: The Reform of the British Army, 1830-54 (Manchester University Press, 1984)
Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women’s Literary Responses to the Great War, 1914-1918 by Jane Potter
‘Tommy’ by Rudyard Kipling
Traitor’s Purse by Marjorie Allingham

How closely do the events of the First World War relate to those in ‘A Galaxy Far, Far Away’?

In this episode Chris, Jessica, and Angus discuss the historical inspirations of the Star Wars saga from the depiction of body horror and the creation of those who are ‘more machine than man’ via Stormtroopers, cavalry charges, and the cinematic impact of Paths of Glory.

Who are we? What do we do? And what really happens at academic conferences during the tea breaks?

In this introductory episode, Chris, Jessica and Angus introduce themselves and their research interests, both academic and geeky. We discuss various cultural genres which reference the First World War, including detective fiction, Star Wars and death metal music, and ask why the First World War has particular popular cultural relevance.