Glimpses: British Visions Of War & Peace

In a new exhibition entitled Glimpses: British Visions of War & Peace, a selection of topics on 20^th century British history demonstrates the richness and variety of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives’ holdings on modern Britain. The exhibition was produced by the students in a Stanford History Department class taught by Peter Stansky, Frances and Charles Field Professor of History emeritus, in the spring quarter of 2016.

The student curators explore four diverse glimpses into the British past, inspired by their research in the Archives: a German internment camp for British prisoners during the First World War, a collection of landscapes made by British official war artists during the First World War, maps proposing the partition of Palestine in 1938, and the collaboration between the American Office of Strategic Services and the British Special Operations Executive during the Second World War.

While only scratching the surface of what is available in the Hoover Archives, these glimpses suggest lines of inquiry that can vastly enrich our understanding of the past and inform our perception of life today.

Glimpses: British Visions of War & Peace will be on display in the Hoover Tower at Stanford University from June 2 through July 31, 2016, and open to the public, free of charge from 10am to 4pm.

Colossus Computer in Action (Station X, Bletchley Park, 1943), Carl Bartram Photograph Collection

Detail: In the Air by C.R.W. Nevinson, 1917. The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals Printed Material

Collage of The A, B, and C Plans from the Palestine Partision Commission, 1938, J.C. Hurewitz Papers

Detail: Déniecourt Château, Estrées. From "The Western Front, Part VII." July 1917. By Muirhead Bone. Great Britain, Foreign Office, Wellington House Publications.

Title page of the F. F. Beer collection sketchbook created by various POWs at the Ruhleben prison camp, 1915

Detail of illustration by Robert Walker, titled "The Canteen," circa 1915. F. F. Beer Collection