Celia Johnson’s Tears: Mourning and Remembrance in Post-Second World War Britain

Speaker: Lucy Noakes, Professor, University of Essex

Lucy Noakes presents her paper which examines the ways in which British society ‘managed’ the losses of the war years. Working with the idea of an ‘emotional economy’ the paper explores the representation, articulation, management and experience of loss in a range of different sites and texts, including film, magazines, newspapers, Mass Observation, and memorialisation.

Bio:
Lucy Noakes is Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex, where she holds the Rab Butler Chair in Modern History. Her most recent monograph, Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Post Second World War Britain (Manchester University Press: 2020) won the Social History Society 2022 book prize. She is currently working on several projects, including a comparative history of death and grief in wartime Europe, a study of Britain’s First World War centenary commemorations, and a reconstruction of VE day using Mass Observation diaries.

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