Dr David Clarke will give a keynote presenting his research on the origins of some of the First World War’s best known legends at the DMUlocalResearch Festival, De Montfort University, Leicester, on Wednesday 11th November.

#DMUlocal Research Festival is a week-long free festival located at De Montfort University taking place from 9-13 November 2015. The aim of the festival is to further engage with the local community by connecting the skills and expertise of DMU academics and students through the celebration of Humanities and Social Science.

New Perspectives of the First World War commemorates the lives of soldiers who fought in the 1914-18 conflict and features a stunning piece of music and narration based on one of the war’s most mysterious events.

Dr Clarke’s talk will examine the role played by newspapers and military propagandists in the creation of three iconic legends of the war: The Angels of Mons, the phantom Russian Army and the German ‘corpse factory’.

His research on WW1 newspapers was funded by the British Academy and first appeared in Folklore journal and later in a book, The Angel of Mons (Wiley 2004). Dr Clarke is joint course leader and Principal Research Fellow in SHU’s Journalism subject group.

This presentation will be followed by An Angel at Mons: Immersive Electroacoustic Music created by Professor of Composition, John Young. This provides a unique sound experience framing the recorded words of an Irish soldier who described his experiences at Mons to the BBC on his 101st birthday in 1980.

The evening also includes a talk by DMU journalism lecturers John Dilley and David Penman who have embarked on research to investigate how local newspapers in the UK manoeuvred around Lord Kitchener’s draconian wartime press censorship laws to produce articles that rivalled the war poets for powerful imagery.