Presented as part of the HRC Seminar Series

In this the centenary year of what could reasonably be described as the twentieth century’s ‘original sin’ of 1914, I shall examine the reaction of some Bloomsbury writersLytton Strachey especially, but also E.M. Forster, Maynard Keynes, Clive Bell & Virginia Woolfnot so much to the experience of World War I (for none of them experienced the war first hand) as to what I have called ‘The Myth of the Great War’. Using the writings of G.M. Trevelyana fairly typical progressive who became a liberal warrior in 1914 as a template, I shall outline the nature of what became the prevailing myth. I shall then explore the ways in which Bloomsbury sought to puncture this myth, and to ‘make a protest’ against what one of them called ‘a whole set of vices and weaknesses which had come to treated as virtues’: myths (as they saw them) of patriotism, honour, duty, manliness, self sacrifice, fortitude, atonement, conformity, comradeship, chivalry, philanthropy, good sportsmanship and missionary politics (to mention a few!) Bloomsbury, of course, created its own myth but that is another story.

Dr. Alastair MacLachlan is a historian and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre, ANU. He taught for many years at Sydney University and also at Cambridge University, UNSW and Victoria University, Wellington. He has written on a range of topics from The British Civil Wars of the 17th century and Queen Anne’s England through the French Revolution and European Nationalism to the English ‘history wars’ of the 1930s and the British Marxist Historians. He is currently completing a dual biography of G.M. Trevelyan and Lytton Strachey entitled ‘The Pedestal and the Keyhole’. His most recent publication is ‘Becoming National? G.M. Trevelyan: The Dilemmas of a Liberal (Inter)nationalist 19001945. (HRC., ANU ePress 2013).

The Humanities Research Centre was established in 1972 as a national and international centre for excellence in the Humanities and a catalyst for innovative Humanities scholarship and research within the Australian National University. The HRC interprets the "Humanities" generously, recognising that new methods of theoretical enquiry have done much to break down the traditional distinction between the humanities and the interpretive social sciences; recognising, too, the importance of establishing dialogue between the humanities and the natural and technological sciences, and the creative arts.