Face-to-face with the enemy

New research on enemy encounters over the last two centuries features in new Imperial War Museum exhibition

How do attitudes towards the enemy change when they come face to face in war?

In a major new project Professor of English Literature Holly Furneaux has paired up with Dr Matilda Greig (now historian at National Army Museum) to explore interaction with the enemy in conflicts across time, featuring as part of a new Imperial War Museum London exhibition.

Collaborating across English literature and history, Professor Furneaux and Dr Greig unearthed many instances of intimacy with the enemy, from truces, treatment of the wounded, and care for prisoners of war in their new research project.

Strange Meetings: Enemy Encounters 1800 – 2020 interrogates military and civilian attitudes towards the enemy, and how war’s reality diluted or inflamed hatred of the opposing side.

Featured in the Fighting Wars section of War and the Mind at IWM, Strange Meetings delves into ideas of otherness and familiarity, and war’s many dividing lines – including nation, race, religion and culture.

Human thought, emotion, and behaviour are critical to why humans begin, fight, endure, and end wars. War and the Mind asks visitors to rethink conflict through this psychological lens.

Alongside objects from museum collections, the exhibition features groundbreaking research projects funded by UK Research and Innovation, in particular the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Professor Furneaux, War and the Mind’s Senior Curator Laura Clouting and Re-live Artistic Director Karin Diamond explore the challenges of presenting difficult histories, and consider complex mental and emotional experiences of conflict in a free public talk and Q&A (14 November, 17:00] at this year’s Being Human Festival in Cardiff’s Temple of Peace.

Professor Furneaux explains more:

‘The exhibition has given us an opportunity to showcase some of the more surprising findings of our research such as the shame often felt by those taking enemy prisoners. In our own time of major conflict and insularity it has been a privilege to work on the challenging history of intimacy between enemies, and to hone ideas through conversations with veterans and soldiers about their experiences of the enemy.’

Professor Holly Furneaux specialises in Victorian literature and culture. Together with Matilda Greig she is editor of Enemy Encounters in Modern Warfare and her book on Enemy Intimacies and Strange Meetings in Writings of Conflict 1800-1918 is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. An adviser to the BBC’s Dickensianseries, she recently curated Created in Conflict: Soldier Art from the Crimean War to the Present. Her previous books include Military Men of Feeling: Emotion, Touch and Masculinity in the Crimean War and Queer Dickens: Erotics, Families, Masculinities.

Strange Meetings: Enemy Encounters 1800 – 2020 is a partnership between Cardiff University, Imperial War Museum, Museum of Military Medicine and Arts in Health charity Re-Live, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

War and the Mind is open at the Imperial War Museum London until 27 April 2025.