janeflynnsenseandsentimentality

Equine Cultures in Transition – Leeds June 19th-21st, 2018

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I will be speaking at the second biannual Equine Cultures in Transition conference to be held at Leeds Beckett University on the 19th to 21st June 2018.

Details of the conference can be found here:

http://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/events/faculty-events/equine-cultures-in-transition/

Here is what I will be talking about:

“A Kind of Companionship” A Critical Study of the Soldier-Horse Relationship in The Great War.

The British Army’s organisation brought the soldier and horse together solely for the purposes of war. However, a perpetual drive for economy and military efficiency also created an environment where the horse and the soldier were treated far more humanely than they had ever been in the Army’s past. The soldier was expected to always put his horse first, just as an officer was expected to put the needs of his men before his own. A soldier whose own needs were met in terms of rations, equipment, clothing, shelter and medical attention was far more inclined to take good care of his horse. Similarly, a horse that was well managed remained serviceable for longer. Soldiers were encouraged to take an active interest in the welfare of their horses and were given sole responsibility for their well-being. When on active service, soldiers lived and worked alongside their horses; sharing war’s dangers and privations. Many soldiers came to think of their horses as “comrades”.

Today, this relationship is often misunderstood. It is sentimentalised and trivialised. Yet the soldier-horse relationship offers us the opportunity to think about the bonds we forge with animals, when we do so, and why. It also encourages us to consider the problematic nature of human-horse interactions past and present. The soldier-horse relationship is a study of human-animal interactions as relevant today as it was one hundred years ago.

Proud Soldier takes a Selfie with his Horse. — http://www.ukcophumour.co.uk

Horses in ‘The War Illustrated’, 1914-1918.

The Pitiable Martyrdom of Man’s Faithful Friend: Portrayals of the Soldier and his Horse in The War Illustrated, 1914 to 1918.

The War Illustrated emerged in 1914 as an illustrated newspaper dedicated solely to coverage of events during the First World War. Unlike the established broadsheets, The War Illustrated was affordable and targeted at the ‘busy’ reader. Packed with illustrations and photographs, and with dramatic stories of bravery and excitement, readers were able to follow events as they unfolded week-by-week. This gave more people in Britain access to written news about the War’s progress, but also to illustrated and photographic images of what war looked like – and portrayals of soldiers and horses were prominent in this coverage…

‘The Farrier in the Fray’, The War Illustrated, 25^thSeptember 1914. Reproduced with the permission of Time Inc. UK.

Read the full article at: Pethistories

https://pethistories.wordpress.com/2018/04/03/the-pitiable-martyrdom-of-mans-faithful-friend-portrayals-of-the-soldier-and-his-horse-in-the-war-illustrated-1914-to-1918/

Review: ‘The Warhorse in the Modern Era’

Review by Jane Flynn Hyland A., The Warhorse in the Modern Era: The Boer War to the Beginning of the Second Millennium, Black Tent Publications, Stockton on Tees, 2010. Ann Hyland’s book The WarHorse in the Modern Era: The Boer War to the Second Millennium is the third and last in a series that […]

via #ShelfieSunday: The Warhorse in the Modern Era: The Boer War to the Beginning of the Second Millennium — Equine History Collective

‘The Triumph of Steam’ – continued…

Hello!

Just a brief update on The Triumph of Steam. Last week, we cased it back in (put the cover back on) and worked on the spine. We’ve used some extremely soft calf leather, which has come up really well. It was (fortunately) also quite cooperative to work with, given how complex this project has been. Matt and I are very pleased with the results.

Now a decision has to be made about the spine. Do we put the old spine facing back over the new leather, or do we work with the new leather instead? In terms of restoration, the first choice would retain more of the original material. However, the book will look much smarter without it. Decisions, decisions. Something to think on over Christmas and before our next session.

As you can see, it is extremely worn. Replace, or not?

Still some work to be done!

The next stage will be to finish replacing the old end papers and to restore the wear on the cover. We can’t replace the gold work, but we can bring the blue back. A lovely book, that’s going to going to have a new lease of life I think!

TTFN!

Sense & Sentimentality: The Soldier-Horse Relationship in The Great War.

During the Great War, the horse was essential to military efficiency. Horses hauled artillery guns, transported vital supplies and ammunition, and carried men into battle. The military horse was, in fact, a weapon. Many thousands of horses were purchased and supplied to the British Expeditionary Force at great expense, because without them an Army could not function. Although the British Army was the most modern of all the belligerent forces during the Great War, the horse was nevertheless favoured because of its reliability and versatility. For example, horses coped much better than motor vehicles where the going was difficult. It was horse-power that ensured the Army’s lines-of-communication were maintained. Indeed, without an adequate supply of horses it is probable that the British Army would not have achieved victory in 1918.

However, the military horse was also a weapon which quickly broke down when it was not properly maintained. The British Army had learned this to its cost during the Boer War, when more horses had been killed by bad management than by enemy action. Good horse management in the field depended upon the soldier. It was essential that he had received adequate training, and it was also essential that he take responsibility for his horse’s well-being. During the Great War, all soldiers given ‘ownership’ of a horse were taught to put their horse’s needs before their own, and to always think first of their horse. They were taught to see their horse in the same way as an infantryman would his rifle; as something he may have cause to rely upon and which it was therefore in his best interests to look after. The soldier-horse relationship developed once the soldier’s care became one of sympathetic consideration. Soldiers and their horses spent most of their lives together when on active service, and it was this close proximity which helped to bond them into a unit. Many soldiers came to see their horses as comrades; they named them, and went to great lengths to protect their horses from harm. From the Army’s perspective, the soldier-horse relationship ensured that an expensive military asset was properly maintained.

At home, portrayals of the soldier-horse relationship extended its vital contribution to the war effort beyond the battlefield. For example, images and stories that told of the soldier’s kindness to his horse bolstered a positive illusion the British had of themselves as a people capable of both strength and compassion. Images of the soldier-horse relationship played an important part in helping the British people to imagine war. They also provided much-needed comfort and reassurance when friends and loved ones were in danger. Importantly, by studying these portrayals dispassionately, we find that they were never entire flights of fancy, and often bore more than a passing resemblance to the soldier’s actual experience. Indeed, it becomes possible to question whether sense and sentimentality ever did entirely part company in the British imagination. Like their flesh and blood inspiration, portrayals of the soldier-horse relationship have not received the attention they merit. By rectifying this oversight, this thesis not only contributes to study of the horse-human relationship, but also to our knowledge of the Great War. Not least, because we achieve a better appreciation of what it was like to live in the War’s shadow.

Access to my thesis is available via The University of Derby’s online repository:

https://derby.openrepository.com/derby/handle/10545/621040

Or go to my page on academia.edu and follow the links:

https://janeflynn.academia.edu/

Note that any reference to the abstract or thesis must be properly attributed and cited.

On Copyright and Permissions. “I feel a bit like Sherlock Holmes…”

I’m currently working on a short piece (as part of the AHRC Pets and Family Life Project) about the way horses and soldiers were portrayed in the illustrated press during The First World War. I am particularly interested in The War Illustrated, as this was an extremely popular publication 1914-1918, was affordable to all, and would have been widely read by the British masses. For those who had never witnessed warfare first-hand, this was the nearest they would ever come to ‘seeing’ war. It was also the only means they had of forming the scant information they were given in the letters home of their loved ones into pictures.

Obviously, when talking about visual images, you really want to be able to include some examples in your work. So, off I went on a mission to try and find out who actually owned rights to The War Illustrated now in 2017. This proved to be no easy task. Albeit an extremely interesting one. I knew, for example, that it was originally owned by The Amalgamated Press. That it had two periods of publication, during the First and Second World Wars, and went out of print (never to return) in the late 1940s. But who owned it now? Rights to The War Illustrated had been bought along with numerous other defunct titles by IPC. However, IPC was no longer in existence either. Time Inc. had bought IPC, but did they still own The War Illustrated? (They had sold rights to an array of Amalgamated Press comics fairly recently.) The search continued…

Image result for sherlock holmes — The Sherlock Holmes Museum, London.

And now we were in New York. (Well, by email and the powers of the internet anyway.) Times Inc. had moved its archive to a special collection curated jointly by The New York Historical Society and Time Inc’s own archivists. Had they got The War Illustrated? No. But … at long last … they did know who I needed to contact. Back to London we go and … problem solved within moments. “Voila!” And how interesting it has been. My faith in the power of random people to be wonderful and helpful has been restored. Everyone I have ‘met’ along the way has been so helpful.

I now know a lot more about copyright and permissions than I ever have before. Well, I’ll know for next time. 🙂

TTFN!

Horses in ‘The Triumph of Steam’

Last week I looked at The Triumph of Steam and talked about the work Matt Edwards (www.mattedwardsbooks.tumblr.com) and I had been doing to restore it. The Triumph of Steam

I hinted too that there might be a horse connection – so here it is.

As the more horse-literate amongst us are no doubt well aware, and more than capable of imagining, horses and steam engines did not always mix. Henry Frith’s The Triumph of Steam provides us with an interesting insight into the sort of problems people (and horses) may have been party to when horse first encountered machine. Especially, perhaps, in the early days, before horses became accustomed to the noisy, fire belching beasts in their midst!

Horse and Train — From: *Across Maryland History: The B & O Railway’s Early Days* by Neal J. Conway, http://www.nealjconway.com

Recalling the early days of steam, Henry Frith tells us:

“We who live in days when to be near a railroad is considered the greatest possible advantage, increasing the price of property, and promoting in every way our comfort and convenience, cannot imagine the panic that the very name of a railway excited some sixty years ago. It was to bring ruin, destruction, death, to everything it came near. The air was to be poisoned with noxious smells of the engines! Cattle grazing in the fields would die with fright at its hideous shrieks and squeaks. It would be no longer safe to travel on any road near which a railway ran; for what horse could be trained to bear the sight of the infernal monster? There would be no end to the accidents and of the peril to life and limb…”

The Triumph of Steam

Hello! So here is my current book repair and restoration project. This time, it isn’t one of my own books, hence the change of subject. But there is still a horse connection – and I’ll tell you all about that at a later date! 🙂

This revised edition of The Triumph of Steam by Henry Frith was published in 1892 by Griffith Farran & Co. Limited, London. In 1898 it was awarded to Philip H.G. Lord by his school, The Grammar School at Newchurch, as a 2nd prize for drawing. I think I’ve mentioned this in my Blogs before, but I love the oddments, inscriptions, annotations and other interesting things that are sometimes to be found in old books. They give a sense of its story and the people to whom it once belonged. I wonder what became of Philip Lord?

The copy I have been working on has had a hard life, but it is easy to see this would have been quite an expensive book at the time. It is bound in an extremely fine calf skin leather, is nicely constructed and is illustrated throughout. Working with leather has of itself been a new and exciting venture. I have learned how to pare leather. You (as I was) may not be aware that the construction of the spine is entirely different from the process used when working with cloth bound books. Older books also tend to be bound using cord rather than tape. In this repair we have replicated the appearance of the cords while making the actual repair using tapes.

I am looking forward to returning it to its rightful owner fully restored! 🙂

‘Soldiers and their Horses’

“Soldiers and their Horses traces the soldier-horse relationship from the Boer War in South Africa, through The Great War and its aftermath and into the Second World War. The story of the soldier and his horse takes us from the British Army’s infamous mishandling of its horses in the Boer War, to the pinnacle of excellence in horse supply, management and veterinary treatment that was achieved during The Great War. Horses would never again be relied upon to the extent they had between 1914 and 1918, but the War’s legacy lived on into and beyond the Second World War whenever and wherever horses were employed.”

(There is more, but that’s for later. Watch this space!)

Well, that’s another incarnation of my book proposal off to my commissioning editor. I think it’s a lot stronger. It also has a new title. Maybe not as catchy as the old one, but it does ‘do what it says on the tin’, so that has to be a good thing right?

Sense and Sentimentality: The Soldier-Horse Relationship in The Great War

Source: Sense and Sentimentality: The Soldier-Horse Relationship in The Great War