Event Details

Professor Helen Parr (Keele University) discusses 'Social class, masculinity and the Parachute Regiment: The experiences of British paratroopers before, during and after the 1982 Falklands War'.

How does Britain create its soldiers? Focusing on the experiences of the elite Parachute Regiment in the 1982 Falklands War, in this lecture Professor Helen Parr (Keele University) examines the social backgrounds of men who joined its ranks in the late 1970s and early 1980s, looks at how they were trained to become soldiers, and at how they experienced battle and its aftermath. The lives of these men open a window to the relationships between society and the military, between masculinity, regimental identity and armed violence, and between Britain's military past and its present.

Helen Parr is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Keele University and works on post-1945 British history, particularly Britain's relations with Europe, Britain in the Cold War, British-French relations, and British nuclear weapons policy. Her recent research is a cultural history of the Parachute Regiment in the 1982 Falklands war, which has included archival work and interviews with former paratroopers who fought in the Falklands and the families of those killed in the conflict. Her latest book, Our Boys: The Story of a Paratrooper (Penguin, 2019), won the Longman-History Today Book Prize, the Templar Medal Book Prize and the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History in 2019.