We take a look back at the First World War through the lens of the Country Life Archive.
Back in 2014, Country Life began a 10-part series looking at the history of the First World War as revealed by our outstanding archive. Published weekly since 1897, the magazine was still young when Britain declared war on August 4, 1914. It had largely ignored the Boer War, but the scale of the looming conflict made the subject impossible to escape.
Although Country Life never attempted to compete with the daily reportage of newspapers, its own character as a highly produced weekly magazine of catholic tastes made it ideal for providing context for the news and illustrating what papers could only describe. Professional photographs of topical places were regularly published in articles ostensibly concerned with history or culture.
Country Life doesn’t offer a rounded account of the First World War, but each issue is a complete authentic product of its time. As such, a unique authoritative history of the First World War — fascinating, curious, poignant and delightful by turns — may be discovered within its pages. A selection of these images and articles is available online via the links below.
PART V: THE WAR IN THE TRENCHES
PART VI: ADVERTISING & THE WAR
PART IX: THE WOUNDED & PRISONERS
‘They knew they were all going through the same hell’: The graffiti of the First World War
The tragic story of George Moor, the 18-year-old who won a Victoria Cross at Gallipoli and survived the Somme, only to die days before the end of the First World War
Second Lieutenant George Moor was a teenager who signed up for service at the outbreak of the First World War
Ten stately homes which became hospitals during the First World War
To mark 100 years since the end of the First World War, The Royal British Legion draws our attention back
The unique and extraordinary images of the First World War created by Britain’s first-ever official war artist
‘There are some things that never will be reproduced if the world lives a million years’: What it was like to be alive at the end of the First World War
They cheered, they cried, they laughed, they danced in the streets. Almost 100 years to the day since it was
In Focus: The trench cello which brought the joy of music to the First World War
The men who spent years in the trenches of France and Belgium found all manner of ways to bring a
In Focus: The evocative, sensual masterpiece created in the wake of the First World War
Edward Burra was too young to have fought in the First World War, but his powerful oil painting The Snack
