Your evidence, such as it is, is based on the satements of historians a century after the event.

Yes.
I am the only one here who does that!

You have dismissed contemporary accounts as "lies", "revisionism" and "romanticism"
No. I have not.


Dr Dan Todman
Senior Lecturer

I joined Queen Mary College, University of London in 2003. I did my first degree at LSE, for whom I made an embarrassingly brief appearance on University Challenge, and completed a PhD at Cambridge. I then taught at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. As well as my teaching and research, I run the School of History's School Liaison and Widening Participation programme.

Research
I work on the social, military and cultural history of Britain in both world wars, with a particular interest in intersection between home and fighting fronts and the remembrance of conflict. I am currently working on a major new history of Britain's Second World War, as well as undertaking research with my undergraduate students into London's experience of the First World War.

Undergraduate teaching
◦Winning on the Western Front: the British Army 1914 -1919
◦Exhibiting the First World War
Postgraduate supervision
I welcome applications from candidates wishing to undertake doctoral research in the areas above and the following areas:

◦the operational military history of British forces in either world war
◦contemporary remembrance of war and conflict
◦the oral history of wartime experiences and attitudes
◦military motivations and morale
◦the political framework of remembrance
◦'war culture' in Britain and the Empire, 1939-1945
Publications
Books
◦D. Todman, The Great War, Myth and Memory The Great War: Myth and Memory, (London: Hambledon and London, 2005).
◦G. Sheffield and D. Todman, eds., (editor and chapter contributor), Command and Control on the Western Front, (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2004).
◦Danchev and D. Todman, eds., War Diaries 1939-1945, Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001).
Articles
◦D. Todman, '"Sans peur et sans reproche": the retirement, death and mourning of Sir Douglas Haig 1918-1928', Journal of Military History, (October 2003).
◦Danchev and D. Todman, 'The Alanbrooke Diaries', Archives, (April 2002).
◦D. Todman, 'The reception of the Great War in the 1960s', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 22, 1 (March 2002).
Chapters
◦D. Todman, 'Defining Deaths: Richard Titmuss's Problems of Social Policy and the Meaning of Britain's Second World War' in N. Martin and P. Purseigle, eds, Aftermath: Memories of War in Europe, 1918, 1945, 1989 (Ashgate, forthcoming)
◦D. Todman, 'Representing the First World War in Britain: The 90th Anniversary of the Somme' in H. Herwig and M. Keren, eds., War Memory and Popular Culture (Ottawa, McFarland, 2009)
◦D. Todman, 'The First World War in Contemporary British Popular Culture' in H. Jones et al, eds., Uncovering the First World War (Amsterdam, Brill, 2008)
Accolades
My book, The Great War: Myth and Memory won the Times Higher Education Supplement Award for Best Young Academic Author in 2005.

Membership of professional associations or societies
I sit on the academic advisory panels for the Imperial War Museum's redesign of its 1914-18 galleries and its 'Lives of the Great War' citizen history project.

Appearances in the media
◦The Show to End all Wars, BBC Radio 4
◦Archive on 4: Remembrance, BBC Radio 4
◦Timewatch: The Last Day of World War One, BBC 2
◦Things We Forgot To Remember: The First World War, BBC Radio 4◦I have also written about the remembrance of the First World War   'The First World War in History' on OUCS World War 1 Centenary Open Educational Resources◦'How We Remember Them Today' in Opendemocracy◦'Misrepresentation of a Conflict?' in BBC History