Popular Culture and Its Relationship to Conflict in the UK and Australia since the Great War

Andrekos Varnava is Professor of British Imperial and Colonial History at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. He has authored four monographs: Assassination in Colonial Cyprus in 1934 and the Origins of EOKA (2021); British Cyprus and the Long Great War, 1914-1925: Empire, Loyalties and Democratic Deficit (2020); Serving the Empire in the Great War: The Cypriot Mule Corps, Imperial Loyalty and Silenced Memory (2017); and British Imperialism in Cyprus, 1878-1915: The Inconsequential Possession (2009). His research generally falls under the umbrella of imperial/colonial, war/conflict, and migration histories. Michael J.K. Walsh is Professor of Art History at Savannah College of Art and Design and Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, Washington, USA. He has authored four monographs: An Old Man’s Tears: Eric Bogle, Music and the Great War (2018); Runaway Dreams: The Story of Mama’s Boys and Celtus (2011); Hanging A Rebel: The Life of C.R.W. Nevinson (2008); and C.R.W. Nevinson: This Cult of Violence (2002). His research interests relate to 'conflict and culture' and focus particularly on English Art and Music at the time of the Great War and on the historic city of Famagusta in Cyprus.

Introduction: The politics of popular cultural production and performance in Britain since the Great War 1. The Queen’s Dolls’ House within the British Empire Exhibition: encapsulating the British imperial world 2. The militarisation of aerial theatre: air displays and airmindedness in Britain and Australia between the world wars 3. Staging international communism: British-Australian radical theatre connections 4. 'Rivalling the Metropolis': cultural conflict between London and the regions c.1967–1973 5. Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) and his anti-war and pro-peace protest songs: from hippy peace to Islamic peace 6. Eric Bogle’s No Man’s Land and the grave of Willie McBride at the Somme