Visited an interesting exhibition at the Palace Green Library at Durham
University linking the World War I centenary with literature produced in the
preceding decades (both in Britain and Germany) aimed at developing the ‘right’
moral attitudes and encouraging an adventuresome spirit in the future
foot-soldiers of the respective empires, made possible in Britain as the 1870
Elementary Education Act vastly increased child literacy and provided fertile
ground for the fiction of RL Stevenson, John Buchan, H Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan
Doyle, Erskine Childers and the like, and of course for the seminary ‘Scouting
for Boys’; the old volumes on show were attractive to see but untouchable in
their glass cases, with the most unexpected exhibit being Baden-Powell’s camp
fire blanket (more of a biblical robe) complete with prototype badges sewn by
his (literally Lady) wife.
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