Untold stories of the First World War at University exhibition

Stories from the First World War are being revealed for the first time at an exhibition by The University of Nottingham commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of the conflict. All Quiet in the Weston Gallery opens at Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park, on Friday 9 May. The exhibition uses a wide range of material from the University's historic archival and library collections to look at the war through the eyes of the people who experienced it — from the soldier on the battlefield to the worker in the munitions factory, from the volunteer nurse to the wife and mother, and from the British 'Tommy' to the German 'Fritz'. It explores the effects of 1914-1918 on ordinary people, looking at its impact on business, student life, literature and the place of women. Contemporary attitudes to the conflict are also examined, from the propaganda of recruitment images to post-war efforts to memorialise the dead. The exhibition includes the stories of three families who all sent at least three sons to fight and how German prisoners of war were held at the Sutton Bonington campus of the Midland Agricultural and Dairy College, now the School of Biosciences at the University. The display then widens out to reflect the global nature of the war with material ranging from the papers of a quartermaster in the American Expeditionary Force to the letters of an Austrian soldier in a Russian prisoner of war camp.