Recent developments in the cultural history of the Great War have begun to change perceptions of the response of British servicemen to their experiences. The view that the war represented a crisis of masculinity, which led to a retreat into the world of men and combatant experience, along with a heightened sense of misogyny, is increasingly under question. This article seeks to utilize a range of middle-brow, war-themed books by British ex-combatants to examine questions of ex-combatant idealism, gender and disenchantment. It is argued that British literary ex-combatants remained loyal to the volunteer idealism of 1914/15, and imagined a renewed England characterized by traditional myths, and gendered roles modified by male and female war service.
