Rachel Moore’s work expands our understanding of the relationship between culture and war and more specifically between classical music and World War I in France, extending the work of Jane Fulcher and Martha Hanna. The war brought a set of challenging difficulties (‘a precariousness’, in Moore’s words) including the loss of performers and staff, curfews, German bombings and the rising cost of paper for musical editions. In one chapter, Moore details the particular problems of the opera given its high costs and German repertoire. Despite all of that, directors adapted with smaller orchestras (with more women!), shortened works and air-raid shelters.... Performing Propaganda: Musical Life and Culture in Paris During the First World War Regina M Sweeney

In this excellent book, Ludivine Broch lucidly analyses the history of the cheminot community under the Vichy regime and German occupation of France in the Second World War. Broch explores the fascinating intricacies of the everyday experiences of the men and women working on the railways during the Dark Years, drawing on both oral history and archival documents. What Broch proves, convincingly, is that there was no one single lived experience of the Occupation, given the wide range of personal and professional trajectories of those involved with the railway industry. Indeed, so many of the individuals discussed in this book are... Ordinary Workers, Vichy and the Holocaust: French Railwaymen and the Second World War David Lees