After the First World War many thousands of memorials were produced in the United Kingdom. Hundreds featured figurative imagery, the largest project of public sculpture the country has ever known.

Geoff Archer’s book explains how, why, by whom, and for whom, memorials were produced. The Glorious Dead, published by Frontier Publishing in November 2009, is the first comprehensive analysis of the subject. Lavishly illustrated with the author’s own photographs of soldiers and sailors, allegories of Peace, Grief, Victory and Death and images of women, workers, horses and biplanes, it concludes with lists of figurative memorials by date, design, location and sculptor.

Here are the artists of the 1920s, called upon to render in marble and bronze the nation’s remembrance and grief: George Frampton, Albert Toft, Goscombe John, C.S. Jagger, Gilbert Ledward, Derwent Wood, Alexander Carrick, Walter Marsden, Louis Roslyn and many more. After nine decades their work can now be viewed in a new light and their contributions to the history of twentieth century British sculpture rightfully restored to centre stage.

Chapter 1: Pro Patria

This chapter considers the significance of pre-war constructions of masculinity and militarism which led to the clamour to enlist when war was declared, and of patriotic attitudes reflected in numerous images of Britannia and St George.

Chapter 2: Men Who March Away

Despite the popularity of allegorical images, the most common figure on civic war memorials was that of the ordinary soldier. Soldiers, sailors, airmen - and the women and children left behind as men ‘marched away’ - are all considered here.

Chapter 3: The Women of Britain Say ‘Go!’

The primary role of women at the start of the war seemed to be the encouragement of men’s enlistment. This chapter questions associated assumptions of men’s natural aggression and examines the illustration of the serviceman as the defender of women and children.

Chapter 4: Strong, Sensible and Fit

Positive images of women - as nurses and workers in factories and on the land, and as members of the Women’s Services - are looked at here, as are depictions of men in ‘reserved’ occupations who contributed to the war effort on the home front.

Chapter 5: Under Fire

The impact of modern weapons had a devastating effect on men’s bodies. How the serious injury of the serviceman, both mental and physical, was dealt with during the war, and by post-war memorialists, is examined in this chapter.

Chapter 6: The Great Sacrifice

The attitude of the church, the sanctification of the self-sacrificing serviceman and the use of religious imagery in memorial sculpture are all discussed here.

Chapter 7: A Narrative of War

This chapter looks at the role of narrative in memorial schemes, not only in the use of relief panels but also in the organisation of architectonic, textual and figurative imagery to ‘tell a story’ of the war.

Chapter 8: Peace

The presentation of both realistic and allegorical responses to the declaration of peace - with apparently celebratory images of the returning soldier and figures of Peace, Victory and Liberty - are examined here.

Chapter 9: We Will Remember Them

The organisational and decision-making processes of memorialisation, from the formation of war memorial committees to the choice of imagery,  siting and the commissioning of the sculptor, are discussed at some length in this chapter.

Chapter 10: Memory and Mourning

The role of war memorials as both ‘sites of memory’ and ‘sites of mourning’ is discussed and illustrated here with appropriate examples.

Chapter 11: Regeneration

A post-war concern with reconstruction included a perceived need for a return to the ‘normality’ of the pre-war years. This final chapter aims to show how positive images of the athletic male body and more dependent images of women was a part of the discourse of regeneration at this time.

War memorials  (from top to bottom)  

Blackpool, ‘The Commercials’ Memorial (Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

Dingwall, The Guards’ Memorial (London)

Rawtenstall, Londonderry

St Anne’s-on-Sea

Portadown, Macclesfield

Liverpool, Cambridge

Ditchingham

Aldeburgh and Denbigh

(Photos by Geoff Archer)

“Archer is celebrating the last great flourishing of figurative British sculpture. His account is exhaustive, rich in detail and anecdote, taking his subject in all aspects of its imagery ... With its many photographs and copious appendices, it is a wonderful gazetteer, for those of us already hooked, to be put in the car on our travels around the country.”

William Packer (‘The Times’, 12 December 2009)