Professor of History and Education, Kingston University.
Research
PUBLICATIONS
Books:
The politics of manpower, 1914-1918 (Manchester University Press, 1988).
Sir Eric Geddes: business and government in war and peace (Manchester University Press, 1989).
Sussex in the First World War (Sussex Record Society, Lewes, 2004) [introduction, commentaries and notes].
Articles:
The Liverpool Dock Battalion: Military intervention in the Mersey Docks, 1915-1918' Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Vol. 131, 1982.
Articles
Military Tribunal Papers: The case of Leek Local Tribunal in the First World War. Archives Vol. 16, 1983
Total War?: The Quest for a British Manpower Policy, 1917-1918. Journal of Strategic Studies Vol. 9, 1986
Improvising the British war effort: Eric Geddes and Lloyd George, 1915-1918, War and Society (Australia) Vol. 7, No. 2, September 1989, reprinted in M.Neiburg (ed.).
The International Library of Essays in Military History (Ashgate Publishing, 2005).
Mobilising manpower: The Audenshaw Tribunal in the First World War. Manchester Region History Review Vol. 3, No. 2, Winter 1989.
Britain at War, 1914-1918: Update. The Historian No. 27, Summer 1990.
Businessmen in Wartime Government: Lloyd George's 'Man for the job' approach 1915-1918 in J. Loades (ed.) The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (Headstart History, 1991)
Making sense of the Great War: regimental histories 1918-1923. Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research Vol. LXIX, No. 277, Spring 1991.
Early historical responses to the Great War: the writings of Fortescue, Conan Doyle and Buchan in B. Bond (ed.) British military historians and the First World War (Oxford U.P., 1991).
Sir Eric Geddes, Lloyd George and the transport problem, 1918-1921. Journal of Transport History Vol. 13, 1992.
Lowther's Lambs': Rural paternalism and voluntary recruitment in the First World War. Rural History Vol. 4, 1993.
The intersection of politics and business: a biographical exploration of the 'Eric Geddes' type, 1915-1937. History Teaching Review Year Book (Scotland) Vol. 7, 1993.
Nelson's History of the War: John Buchan as a military historian, 1914-1922. Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 28, 1993.
A History of the Great War: the re-emergence of Buchan's grand narrative on the Great War in 1921-1922. The John Buchan Journal No. 13, Winter 1993-1994.
C. E. Montague, Manchester and the remembrance of war, 1918-1925' Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester Vol. 77, No. 2, 1995.
The Organization of British Manpower in the First World War and the Question of Total War in P. Volobuev, Y. Koudrina et al. World War I and the twentieth century. Acts of the International Conference of Historians (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1995).
War Correspondents and Conducting Officers on the Western Front from 1915 in H. Cecil and P. Liddle (eds.) Facing Armageddon. The First World War Experienced (Leo Cooper, 1996, reprinted 2003).
Neville Lytton, the Balcombe frescoes and the experience of war, 1908-1923', Sussex Archaeological Collections Vol. 134, 1996.
C. E. Montague and the making of Disenchantment, 1914-1922' War in History Vol. 4, 1997.
The 'Recruiting Margin' in Britain: Debates on Manpower during the Third Battle of Ypres' in P. Liddle (ed.) Passchendaele in Perspective. The Third Battle of Ypres (Leo Cooper, 1997).
David Lloyd George' in R. Eccleshall and G. Walker (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (Routledge, 1998).
Commemorating the fallen: war memorial debates in four Sussex villages after the armistice' The Poppy and the Owl No. 24, November 1998.
The transportation mission to GHQ, 1916' in B. Bond (ed.) 'Look to your front': studies in the First World War (Spellmount, Staplehurst, 1999).
Haig and the Government, 1916-18' in B. Bond and N. Cave (eds.) Haig. A reappraisal 70 years on (Leo Cooper, 1999, reprinted 2009).
Common meeting places and the brightening of rural life: Local debates on village halls in Sussex after the First World War' Rural History Vol.10, 1999.
Sussex in the First World War' in K. Leslie and B. Short (eds.) An Historical Atlas of Sussex (Phillimore, Chichester, 1999).
Investigating war memorial committees; demobilised soldiers, the bereaved and expressions of local pride in Sussex villages, 1918-21' The Local Historian Vol.30 No.1, 2000.
Lloyd George and the management of the British war economy' in R. Chickering and S. Forster (eds.) Great war, Total war: Combat and mobilisation on the Western Front 1914-1918 (German Historical Institute, Washington/Cambridge University Press, New York, 2000).
Commemorating the fallen: the Lord Lieutenant's soldier sons in the First World War and the making of the memorial chapel at St. Barnabas Church, Ranmore' Surrey History 2000.
One entry in C. Messinger (ed.) A Readers Guide to Military History (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001)
Rural parish churches and the bereaved in Sussex after the First World War' Sussex Archaeological Collections Vol. 139, 2001.
Five entries in J. Ramsden (ed.) The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century British Politics (Oxford University Press, 2002).
There are times when we would all prefer the factory life: letters from the trenches to the Shippam works in Chichester during the First World War' Family and Community History Vol. 6/1, 2003.
The quiet of the country and the restless excitement of towns: rural perspectives on the home front, 1914-1918' in M. Tebbutt (ed.) Rural and Urban Encounters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Regional Perspectives (CORAL, Manchester 2004).
Remembering an ill-fated venture: the Fourth Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment at Suvla Bay and its legacy, 1915-1939' in J. Macleod (ed.) Gallipoli: Making History (Frank Cass, 2004).
Eleven entries for the New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)
Huts, demobilisation and the quest for an associational life in rural communities after the war in P. Puirseigle (ed.) Warfare and Belligerence. Perspectives in First World War Studies (Brill, Leiden, Netherlands (History of Warfare Vol.30, 2005).
'Depicting the war on the Western Front: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the publication of The British Campaign in France and Flanders' in M. Hammond and S. Towheed (eds.) Publishing in the First World War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
The Propinquity of Place: Home, Landscape and Soldier Poets of the Great War' in J. Meyer (ed.) The First World War and Popular Culture (Brill, Leiden, Netherlands, 2008).
Leith Hill, Surrey: Landscape, Locality and Nation in the era of the Great War' Landscapes Vol 9 (2), autumn 2008
War comes to the fields. Sacrifice, localism and ploughing up the English countryside in 1917' in I. Beckett (ed.) 1917: Beyond the Western Front (Brill, Leiden, Netherlands, 2009).
Forthcoming publications:
'Remembering the fallen of the Great War in open spaces in the English countryside' in M. Morgan (ed.) Remembrance, Commemoration and Memorials (Black Dog publications, 2011).
Areas of expertise