Soldiers and Their Horses: Sense, Sentimentality and the Soldier-Horse Relationship in the Great War

The soldier-horse relationship was nurtured by The British Army because it made the soldier and his horse into an effective fighting unit. Soldiers and their Horses explores a complex relationship forged between horses and humans in extreme conditions. As both a social history of Britain in the early twentieth century and a history of the British Army, Soldiers and their Horses reconciles the hard pragmatism of war with the imaginative and emotional. By carefully overlapping the civilian and the military, by juxtaposing ＂sense＂ and ＂sentimentality,＂ and by considering institutional policy alongside individual experience, the soldier and his horse are re-instated as co-participators in The Great War. Soldiers and their Horses provides a valuable contribution to current thinking about the role of horses in history.

Jane Flynn PhD is a teacher, historian, and writer with research interests in myth, memory, national identity, and the visual representation of work and war. Jane blogs on www.janeflynn-senseandsentimentality.com and hosts the Facebook group ’Horses and History’. She brings a lifelong passion for horses to her work.