Reginald Hill

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What happens when a late-twentieth-century detective novelist develops strong opinions about the First World War?

This month Angus, Jessica and Chris discuss Reginald Hill’s The Wood Beyond (1995) and the short story ‘Silent Night’ from the collection A Candle for Christmas (2023). Along the way, we consider the significance of the genealogy boom to the historiography of the war, the politics of the Shot at Dawn campaign and the tradition of novelists inventing fictional regiments.

References

Midsummer Murders
The Sweeney
Who Do You Think You Are?
Not Forgotten (2005-2009)
Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991)
Sebastian Japrisot, A Very Long Engagement (1994)
Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong (1993)
Blackadder Goes Forth (1983)
The Monocled Mutineer (1986)
Alan Clark, The Donkeys (1961)
Reginald Hill, Arms and the Women (1999)
________. On Beulah Height (1998)
________. Recalled to Life (1992)
________. Exit Lines (1984)
Helen McCartney, Citizen Soldiers: The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War (2005)
Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914-1916 (2007)
Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (1965)
Susan Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War (1999)
Tammy Proctor, Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War (2003)
Alison Fell, Women as Veterans in Britain and France after the First World War (2018)
Oh! What a lovely podcast, Black Hand Gang
Oh! What a lovely podcast, The Warm Hands of Ghosts

Other episodes

Blackadder

Was Blackadder Goes Forth the most powerful portrayal of the First World War ever put on television?

Fall of Eagles

How did the First World War bring down Europe’s great dynasties, and how did the BBC retell that story on screen?

War-Time In Our Street

What can a 1917 short story collection tell us about life on the British home front during the First World War?