Georgette Heyer

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

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Professor of Modern British History at Leeds University. My research interests lie at the intersection of the histories of gender, particularly masculinity, medicine and warfare.

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A historian focusing on the First World War and popular representations of warfare. I received my PhD from the University of Sussex in 2013. My thesis examined relations between British and French soldiers during the First World War.

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Is a Visiting Research Fellow at Leeds University. My current research focuses on manpower and authority in Britain, starting with the First World War and running through until the end of the Second World War.