ABSTRACT
The First World War marked the great division in British consciousness between the modern, familiar twentieth century and the pre-war world with its roots deep in Edwardian and Victorian Britain. By the time of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, Great Britain was ostensibly the richest and most powerful nation on earth. By 1911 the population had risen to over 40 million and the nation, with the exception of Ireland, had become a heavily industrialised and mainly urban society, centred on the coal-producing areas in the north of England, South Wales, the Scottish lowlands and the Midlands. The idea of nation and Empire was a general if dimly understood source of pride for the multitude to whom it offered little that was tangible. The business of nation and Empire was the province of men; apart from endemic political trouble in Ireland and the small if newsworthy band of suffragettes, most women and their families were concerned as usual with private affairs.
