Our Dream Adaptations

What First World War cultural representations would you like to see adapted for the screen?

This month Angus, Chris and Jessica discuss their dream adaptations of novels, short stories and computer games for the big or small screen. Along the way, we explore what makes for a good film versus a good television series, we consider how to overcome the challenge of the Bechdel test in filming the war, and Chris introduces us to the Bertie Wooster/animé scale of realism.

References:

1917, dir. by Sam Mendes (1919)

AG Macdonell, England, Their England (1933)

Akira, dir. by Katsuhiro Otomo (1988)

All Quiet on the Western Front, dir. by Edward Berger (2022)

Capt WE Johns, Biggles Goes North (1939)

Capt WE Johns, Biggles Goes East (1935)

Emma Hanna, The Great War on the small screen (2009)

Ford Madox Ford, Parades End (1924)

Frederic Manning, Her Privates We (1930)

Lupin, Netflix (2021)

Peter Berresford Ellis et al, Biggles!: Life of Captain WE Johns (1993)

Ralph Hale Mottram, The Spanish Farm Trilogy (1930)

RC Sherriff, Journey’s End (1928)

Sapper, Bulldog Drummond (1920)

The Wind Rises, dir. by Hayao Miyazaki (2013

The Monocled Mutineer, dir. by Jim O’Brien (1986)

Valiant Hearts: The Great War, Ubisoft (2014)

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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.