Telling Tales About Men: Conceptions of Conscientious Objectors to Military Service During the First World War

This was subject to MUP's rigorous external and internal peer review process. 2 external reviewers commented on 2 drafts of the book and the editorial board (consisting largely of academics - historians) also fed in comments, including at a final 3rd review stage. The monograph has been reviewed in a number of academic journals in different disciplines as well as in specialist lay publications and was featured on BBC R4's Thinking Allowed. Telling Tales About Men explores some of the ways in which conscientious objectors to compulsory military service were viewed and treated in England during the First World War. In doing so it considers these men’s experiences, their beliefs, perceptions and actions. Each of the six main chapters explore a different collection of ideas about objectors. Thus, they are, for example, portrayed as cowards, heroes, traitors, patriots, criminals, deviants, degenerates and upstanding, intensely moral men. Here the tales told draw upon sources ranging from diaries, government papers, tribunal records, newspapers, magazines and novels and are informed by writings from fields including literary studies, criminology, sociology and law as well as various branches of historical studies. By drawing upon a wide range of materials, the book presents an innovative sociocultural study of these men, developing pre-existing work about war enthusiasm, masculinity, race and criminality as well as conscientious objection. In addition, in telling a number of tales about how objectors were seen and dealt with, rather than presenting a single chronological story about their wartime experiences, the book offers a new approach to the writing of history, utilising theories of history and narrative.