The Landscape of Sam Mendes’ 1917

How does the landscape inform our understanding of a First World War film?

In this episode cultural historian Beth Wyatt talks to Angus, Jessica, and Chris about the use of landscape in Sam Mendes’ film 1917. Along the way we discuss how soldiers used the world around them to remember home, the importance of cherry trees, and what the Archers landscape would look like if it was real.

References

1917 (2019)

The flora of the Somme battlefield: a botanical perspective on a post-conflict landscape by James Alexander Wearn, Andrew Philip Budden, Sarah Catherine Veniard & David Richardson

Environmental Histories of the First World War – Edited by Richard P. Tucker, Tait Keller, J. R. McNeill, & Martin Schmid

Landscapes of the First World War – Edited by Martina Salvante, Selena Daly & Vanda Wilcox

Where Poppies Blow: The British Soldier, Nature, the Great War by John Lewis-Stempel

‘Destruction of the Ecosystem‘ by Tait Keller

Useful War Memorials, Landscape Preservation and Public Access to the English Countryside: Fitting Tributes to the Fallen of the Great War by Keith Grieves and Jenifer White

George Mackay and Dean-Charles Chapman | Preparing for 1917

The making of 1917 | Mark Strong, Daniel Mays and Andrew Scott

“It’s our burden to learn that story” | Krysty Wilson-Cairns on writing 1917

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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.