Centenary Season

March 13, 2014

How will you be commemorating the anniversary of the First World War? We are continuing our Centenary Season with a selection of events, groups and exhibitions not to be missed during the coming months.

EXHIBITION:

Florence Nightingale Museum

The Florence Nightingale Museum will mark the centenary of the First World War with a special exhibition honouring the inspirational work of nurses in war-torn France. The Hospital in the Oatfield: the art of nursing in the First World War opens on 13 March 2014 and centres on a series of ten remarkable paintings by Victor Tardieu of the field hospital run by the Society beauty, Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland. Never before displayed in public, the paintings capture a moment of tranquillity and transformation amid the turmoil of the First World War. The exhibition explores the crucial role played by women in the battlefields of France and Belgium and shows the incredible innovation displayed by nurses under challenging and dangerous conditions.

TEL: 020 7620 0374 EMAIL: natasham@florence-nightingale.co.uk WEB: www.florence-nightingale.co.uk WHEN: 13 March-26 October 2014 WHERE: 2 Lambeth Palace Road, London, SE1 7EW

CONFERENCE:

Western Front Association – The President’s Conference

This summer the Western Front Association will be hosting the President’s Conference on Saturday 5 July 2014 at the Tally Ho Conference Centre in Birmingham. The conference will focus on A World at War 1914-1918 (1914: the BEF and the German Imperial Armies.)

The conference will include speeches on the following: • The German armies face the BEF in 1914 – Dr Robert Foley • The Eastern Front 1914 – Dr Peter Lieb • Command Amidst Chaos: leadership in the BEF – Dr Spencer Jones • Douglas Haig as Corps Commander in 1914 – Prof Gary Sheffield • Remembrance and False Memory : what everyone knows about the war – Professor Stephen Badsey

The Western Front Association has also recently launched a new website dedicated to the centenary. As well as including news about the centenary, it also enables visitors to add details of Great War Centenary Events (www.firstworldwarcentenary.co.uk).

TEL: 0161 443 1918 WEB: www.westernfrontassociation.com WHEN: 5 July 2014 (10am-5pm) WHERE: Tally Ho Conference centre, Birmingham, B5 7RN

LECTURES:

Martin Randall Travel

Nineteen-Fourteen: the origins of the First World War is a weekend of lectures held in Canterbury Cathedral Lodge run in conjunction with History Today. A package of accommodation is offered in a range of three hotels to cater for different budgets.

Between 3.15pm on Friday and 3.15pm on Sunday, six outstanding scholars give between them 12 talks on the origins of the First World War. There are also discussion sessions and opportunities for informal interchange during refreshment breaks and lunches. Also included is a private drinks reception in the Beaney Museum followed by dinner in restaurants in the centre of the city.

TEL: 020 8742 3355 WEB: www.martinrandall.com WHEN: 14-16 November 2014 WHERE: Canterbury Cathedral Lodge.

RE-ENACTMENT:

PIONEERS OF THE GREAT WAR!

There will always be the necessity to re-evaluate history, in the light of modern research and discoveries, and to actively dispel many, long-held, myths and legends.

The re-enactment group SturmAbteilungBrandt (StAB for short) was founded, more than two years’ ago, for that exact purpose. Portraying the real front-line Imperial German army from 1914-1918, StAB is the UK and Europe’s premier Great War re-enactment group that re-creates German soldiers, as they would have appeared.

With a long-term interest in the Great War and a real vision to portray the era realistically and with conviction, the founders have always striven for excellence in presentation. StAB has a core-membership that tends to expand as neccessary for particular events. Apart from some important UK events, this year will see StAB visiting Belgium and France to participate in major centenary events with our French friends and comrades - to oppose the French, StAB needs more members. Are you at all interested? If so, contact us at the email address below. We would be pleased to hear from you.

As 1914 turns into 1915, and so on, StAB will adapt to the exigencies of trench-warfare and commence to metamorphose into its real persona - as the ‘Kaiser’s Shock-Troops’. Come and join us.

TEL: 07817782066 EMAIL: stab1418@sky.com WEB: www.stab1418.org

To see this feature as it appeared in issue 43 of Military History Matters, click here.