Death in War and Peace

Pat Jalland has been a Professor of History at the Australian National University since 1997. She has published in British women's history, Anglo-Irish history, and the history of death and bereavement in Australia and Britain. Her eight books include The Liberals and Ireland (Harvester, 1980); Women, Marriage and Politics (OUP, 1986), winner of the 1987 Western Australian Literary Award for non-fiction; Death in the Victorian Family (OUP, 1996), winner of the New South Wales Premier's Prize for History, and Changing Ways of Death in 20th Century Australia (UNSW Press, 2006).

An important historical contribution to the study of death and an informative account of how a country has handled far-reaching social challenge and change... Death in War and Peace succeeds in negotiating the gulf between scholarly and non-scholarly terrains, and for this Jalland must be commended.

• Introduction ; Part I: War and Peace 1914-1939 ; 1. Death, the Great War and the influenza pandemic ; 2. Violet Cecil and communities in mourning ; 3. The Bickersteths' sacred pilgrimages to the Great War Cemeteries, 1919-1931 ; 4. Death, disasters and rituals among the northern working classes, 1919-39 ; 5. Sir Sydney Cockerell: cremation and the modern way of death in England ; Part II: The Second World War ; 6. The people's war: Death in the blitz ; 7. Missing airmen and families in anguish: 'There could be no mourning' ; 8. Experiences of wartime grief ; Part III: A changing culture of death and loss since 1945 ; 9. Hidden death: Medicine and care of the dying, 1945 to 1970 ; 10. Widowhood, grief and old age 1945-1963 ; 11. Gorer's map of death: Declining rituals and prolonged sorrow, 1963 ; 12. Observing grief: C.S. Lewis and the psychiatrists ; 13. Epilogue: Change and continuity since the 1970s