Secret History: Charley's War - The Home Front

It was a Britain of shell-shocked veterans, drug addiction, unemployment, the ground-breaking anti-war film J’Accuse, Jazz, and…. revolution.

Welcome to my Secret History of Comics: my new book serialised on Substack. The first section was on Marshal Law: now it’s all about Charley’s War.

If you’re joining me for the first time, you can read the intro to the Secret History here, it’s available for everyone, and so is the intro to Charley’s War.

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There were other action possibilities for Charley and I did consider them. There was the Irish war of Independence, for instance. But Charley as a ‘Black and Tan’ was unthinkable, it was completely out of the question. I also considered Charley as a soldier in Iraq. That would have also been risky, because Britain comes out of it very badly: our soldiers suppressed Arab and Kurd freedom after ‘Perfidious Albion’ had lied to Arab nationalists about giving them independence and then stole their oil. But I couldn’t find any books that gave me the details I needed to present an anti-war perspective, so chances are Charley would have had to remain in Britain.

It was a Britain of shell-shocked veterans, drug addiction (from government issued drugs like ‘Forced March’ as well as legal pharmaceuticals), unemployment, the ground-breaking anti-war film J’Accuse (concluding with dead soldiers rising up to accuse the terrified living cinema audience), Jazz, and…. revolution.