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Professor Heather Jones talks about her recent book on King George V and the monarchy during the Great War. Her book examines how the First World War changed British cultural attitudes to the monarchy, arguing that the conflict ultimately helped to consolidate the crown’s sacralised status. She talks about how the monarchy engaged with war recruitment, bereavement, gender norms, as well as at its political and military powers and its relationship with Ireland and the empire. She suggests that the rise of republicanism in wartime Britain has been overestimated and that war commemoration was central to the monarchy’s revered interwar status up to the abdication crisis in the 1930s. Heather is Professor of Modern and Contemporary European History at University College London. Her book is published by Cambridge University Press. |