SAHR Centenary lectures
Wednesday 21st April - Wednesday 26th May 2021
In April and May 2021, the Society held a six-week programme of evening lectures and research papers to mark our Centenary year.
The proceedings, held virtually on the videoconferencing platform Demio, were ably coordinated by SAHR member Dudley Giles and attracted online audiences of up to eighty-one.
The keynote speakers were Sir Hew Strachan, Dr Yolande Hodson, Professor Juliette Pattinson, Professor Richard Grayson, Professor Ian Beckett and the Society’s Hon. Secretary, the Revd Dr Peter Howson. The topics of their lectures ran the gamut from military maps and the Irish experience of the First World War to the evolution of military history since 1921.
The research panels, featuring a range of speakers including ex-military personnel, academics, and PhD students, offered a range of perspectives on the history of the armed forces from the 1640s to the late twentieth century. Members learned, for example, about the Motor Machine Gun Service in FWW-era India and Afghanistan, the Victorian military’s efforts to manage prostitution, and the women who worked at Royal Artillery experimental ranges during the Second World War. The final panel featured Dr William Fletcher and Dr Ismini Pells, both former members of the SAHR’s Council, who respectively examined the strengths and limitations of Sir William Napier’s History of the Peninsular War and the lives of military pensioners of the Civil Wars.
The stimulating Centenary proceedings were warmly received by the Society’s membership, judging by the wealth of positive feedback received. The breadth and erudition of the lectures and papers testify to the rude health of military history as a discipline, encompassing a range of approaches from campaign histories to social and cultural studies. They also demonstrate that, one hundred years after its founding, the Society remains a respected forum for historical scholarship and discussion, promoting dialogue among academic and independent historians, serving and retired members of the armed forces, and the wider public.
The Society’s Centenary celebrations will continue with an in-person conference day at the National Army Museum in London on 22 September.
