War and remembrance

With its history of innovation and development of some of the most radical and influential aspects of contemporary historical practice, Essex was a natural choice for Lucy when she joined as Rab Butler Chair in Modern History in 2017.

With funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, she was already in the midst of a major project to record how the country commemorated the centenary of the First World War.

Working with academics from the universities of Exeter, Kent and Glasgow, she sought to collect the voices of those who had taken part in centenary events. It was one of the largest public history projects the country had ever seen.

Events had ranged from the nationally-acclaimed installation of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London to small community projects capturing the impact of this global war on local communities.

 “The centenary of the First World War provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity to explore how we engage with history and memory.

"It was a chance to capture for future generations the diversity of events that took place and provide a snapshot of contemporary Britain’s relationship with this key part of our history.”

Led by Lucy, the research team on the Reflections on the Centenary of the First World War project surveyed centenary events, interviewed participants, ran roadshows and organised focus groups.

Their work revealed an ongoing emotional resonance of the First World War and demonstrated the benefits of academics collaborating with practitioners and community historians.

Lucy’s Reflections project inspired her ground-breaking book, Dying for the Nation, published in 2020 and awarded the 2022 Social History Society Book Prize.

By drawing on letters, diaries and sources illustrating everyday life during the Second World War, Professor Noakes traced the impact of grief on those who experienced it first-hand.

She argued that our national commemoration on 11 November, doesn’t do justice to those killed.

Dying for the Nation revealed how local cultures and customs remained extremely important to people, despite pressures from the state to limit public expressions of grief and cultural texts providing models for how people should behave in grief.

She showed how people were encouraged to ‘manage their emotions’ and bear their grief privately as an aspect of good citizenship, arguing that we are still living with the legacies of this emotional style today.

Speaking about Remembrance Day traditions, Lucy said: “Where are the civilian dead, and the dead of other nations? Where is the long-lasting grief and suffering that accompanied bereavement, and which, private texts show us was so widely experienced?”

Described by Social History Society Book Prize judges as an “innovative, at times intimate, account of an important, neglected aspect” of the War, Dying for the Nation’s insights on how nations manage mass death became unexpectedly relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I wanted to remind people that the celebratory approach to the Second World War that we tend to take in Britain hides the death and misery that it brought in its wake.

"I felt a real responsibility towards the people whose lives (and deaths) I was writing about.”

Lucy's research and expertise have led to numerous media appearances, including BBC2’s Blitz - The Bombs That Changed Britain and Channel 4’s My Grandparent’s War, in which she helped actor Helena Bonham Carter uncover her grandmother’s wartime experiences.

With a raising public profile and clear commitment to promoting history and championing its importance she was perhaps the ideal candidate when the Royal Historical Society started looking for a new President.

Founded in 1868, the Society is the UK’s leading society for the support of history and historians, with an international membership of more than 6,000.

Lucy's appointment, in 2024, marked only the second time in its 150-year history that the Society chose a President from outside Oxbridge or Russell Group universities. It was announced at a time of considerable opportunity and challenge for history and historians.

While public interest in the past is unparalleled and historians are working with increasing creativity and skill to bring history to new audiences, its value and contribution to society is often underappreciated, particularly in higher education.

With the rise of social media and some world leaders eager to promote their own versions of history for political gain, the need for education, accuracy and the ability to recognise reliable and unreliable source material has never been greater.

The challenge of supporting and defending the discipline and profession is one Lucy relishes.

“In recent years, the value of studying history at higher education has been questioned by successive governments, and history has often found itself at the centre of manufactured ‘culture wars’.  We are threatened with a future in which the study of history is concentrated in a small number of ‘elite’ institutions’, restricting access for many.

“Over the next few years, the work of championing history, and reminding those in the public sphere of the importance of the past for understanding the present, will be central to my work at the Royal Historical Society.”