To the British soldiers of the Great War who heard about it, "shell shock" was uncanny, amusing, and sad. To those who experienced it, the condition was shameful, unjustly stigmatized, and life-changing. The first full-length study of the British "shell shocked" soldiers of the Great War combines social and medical history to investigate the experience of psychological casualties on the Western Front, in hospitals, and through their postwar lives. It also investigates the condition's origin and consequences within British culture.

Britain since 1945' is an ideal introductory text for students of British Studies, cultural studies and modern British history. Assuming no prior knowledge, Leese offers students of all backgrounds both the essential chronological grounding and vital insight into the issues of identity necessary for a full understanding of contemporary Britain.

Who were the shell shocked soldiers of the First World War? How did the warfare they experienced, the military discipline they often endured, the medical treatment they encountered shape their post-war lives? Peter Leese's Shell Shock, now published for the first time in paperback, narrates their stories to demonstrate the wider implications of shell shock. In its origins, shell shock in the Great War tells us about the new industrial technologies and mentalities of modernity. In its after-life, shell shock helps us understand the histories of violence, trauma and memory through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.