Shell WWI Literature

The Economic Aftermath

It could be argued that the treaty at the end of World War I caused World War II.

Listen to the following podcast and decide for yourself…

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Further Reading:

Goodbye to All That

Robert Graves, aged nineteen, left school within a week of the outbreak of World War I, and immediately volunteered with the Royal Welch Fusiliers. His experiences as a junior officer form the heart of this compelling autobiography. Beginning with an ironic overview of his Edwardian childhood, he proceeds to a tongue-in-cheek account of a young poet's life at public school (not helpful to be half-German, but handy to take up boxing), progressing to caricatures of military stereotypes he encounters in training, and the devastating farce of the War itself, the blundering and mismanagement, and the appalling human consequences. Graves's handling of the horrors of war is always deadpan, honest and unadorned.

Goodbye to all that (penguin.co.uk)

Journey’s End

Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as 'useful [corrective] to the romantic conception of war', R.C. Sherriff's Journey's End is an unflinching vision of life in the trenches towards the end of the First World War, published in Penguin Classics.

Journey's End (penguin.co.uk)