'Daddy, what did you do in the Great War? - English Working Class Fathers in the First World War by Dr Rebecca Ball.
Drawing upon fifty working-class autobiographies, this talk examines the impact of the Great War on fifty English families with a particular focus on the fathers. It explores too the childhood experiences of individuals whose father was absent on the Home Front and compares them with the experience of those whose family remained together due to the father's exemption.
Dr Ball completed her PhD at the University of Wolverhampton in 2021. The thesis examined the everyday lives of the English working-class through the lens of fifty unpublished autobiographies. Dr Ball followed the lives of these fifty individuals across a period from childhood to adulthood across a period of nearly fifty years.