Butterflies and Bloodstains: Fragments of the First World War

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

Shahidha Bari is joined by cultural historian Ana Carden-Coyne, literary scholar Santanu Das, and Julia Neville, co-ordinator of the Exeter First World War Hospitals Project, to discuss the 1914-1918 War. Their research turns the War into a mosaic of feeling and experience, a sensory dislocation and cultural melting pot. Dr Ana Carden-Coyne is Director of the Centre for the Cultural History of War (CCHW) in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester, and author of The Politics of Wounds: Military Patients and Medical Power in the First World War, Santanu Das, Professor of English Literature, Kings College London. His book India, Empire and the First World War: Words, Objects, Images and Music Is out now Dr Julia Neville, is an Honorary Fellow in the History Department at Exeter University, and serves on the Council of the Devon History Society. She co-ordinates the Exeter War Hospitals Research Project.

This podcast was made with the assistance of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which funds research at universities and museums, galleries and archives across the UK into the arts and humanities. The AHRC works in partnership with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's
0:27.5	out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.7	Hello, thanks for downloading the BBC's Arts and Ideas podcast, which explores new research into the humanities.
0:39.2	In this episode, we're looking at the work being done around the centenary of the First World War, 1914 to 1918.
0:46.3	And you might have been following some of the brilliant and thoughtful films, books, exhibitions, programs on TV and radio that have been marking this centenary over the last four years.
0:56.5	Behind the scenes, many of these projects have been underpinned by the unsung work of Britain's volunteer history researchers,
1:04.6	who've been busy digging out the forgotten stories of the war and in an effort to bring us the fullest picture of what happened and what it felt like.
1:12.0	So here's one of our great historian troopers. I salute you, Julia Neville. Hello. Hello. Hi there.
1:17.7	You're joining us down the line from Exeter where you've been coordinating a project about what were the
1:23.0	city's wartime hospitals. And work like yours has been supported by a band of diligent academics. So
1:29.4	bringing up the rear, we have Anna Cardin Coin from Manchester University, also down the line.
1:34.8	Hello, how are you? I'm good, thank you. And with me in the studio is Shanteneu Das of King's College
1:40.9	of London. Hello, Shadha. Hello. And both of you, Anna and Sh Chantini, you know each other and you work on the sensory experience of the war.
1:48.5	Most of your research, forgive me for saying this, is done in small dusty corners and only your dearest colleagues are interested.
1:56.9	But the centenary has really brought you to the four. It's turned the spotlight on your dusty archives to what seems to me huge public interest.
2:05.3	How has it felt bringing your private work to collide with these public acts of commemoration?
2:11.1	Anna, do you want to start?
2:12.8	I think I've always worked with communities both in Britain and in Australia and elsewhere.
2:19.4	For me, it's been great to be able to uncover new things and that there's always
2:26.8	more stories to be told, whether it be through a new way of looking at the medical
	...

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