Officers not gentlemen: officers commissioned from the ranks of the pre-First World War British regular army, 1903-1918

The British army officer commissioned from the ranks had become a rare and politically contested phenomenon in the years leading up to the First World War. This research addresses a previously unexamined phenomenon; how the conflict saw almost 10,000 commissions awarded to soldiers from the ranks of the pre-war British Army, and over 7,000, of these were ‘permanent’, constituting 42 per cent of regular army commissions. This was deeply threatening to the identity of gentleman-officers that had embedded a culture of gentlemanliness parsed into the rules and behaviours that governed army life and the homo-social space of the officers’ mess. This investigation shows the emergence of the ranker officer identity, progressively defined during the war through a process of Othering in terms of socio-cultural differences, particularly presentation and speech. The post-war officer class resumed its pre-war social and cultural character, maintaining its exclusivity and ethos and the ranker officer was increasingly caricatured in the discourses surrounding regimental officering and Englishness. The ranker officer, is fully examined for the first time in this thesis and this examination crucially informs our understanding of the persistence of an elite through the continuing gentlemanly appropriation of British army officer identity

A Fortunate Man remembered...50 Years On

Adopting a public history approach, this community exhibition, screenings, talks, and participative research explored the book A Fortunate Man. Published in 1967 the book became recommended reading for trainee General medical Practitioners. It explores the relationship between a rural doctor and his patients and is an intense, probing analysis of the doctor – "Dr John Sassal" in particular – but also the role of the GP more widely in society. It's author was painter, critic and Marxist intellectual John Berger, in collaboration with Swiss documentary photographer Jean Mohr. The doctor was based on Berger’s friend and own GP Dr John Eskell and his practice in and around the Forest of Dean village of St Briavels. Widely praised (though not without some criticism) since its publication, in 2015 the book featured at a Royal College of Art conference celebrating Berger’s diverse and prodigious career. As the panel of doctors discussed the book, one aspect was starkly absent: the people and landscape of the Forest of Dean, the setting for the book. In a weekend of events in June 2018 the University of Gloucestershire’s Reading the Forest project, in partnership with Forest of Dean Local History Society and the villagers of St Briavels, addressed this as A Fortunate Man Revisited, 50 Years On examined the book firmly from the perspective of the real community (St Briavels) and Dr Eskell at the centre of it. What did the book say about the village, and wider Forest of Dean, of the 1960’s? How did it describe the people? What picture did it paint of the real-life Dr Eskell? How accurate is Berger’s depiction and analysis? The weekend included exhibition, talks, discussions and guided walks, as well as screening of films: the 1967 feature on the book filmed locally for BBC TV New Release arts programme; a 1972 BFI-funded docu-drama by Jeff perks filmed in Blakeney and Soudley featuring performances by local people; and cine films from the late 1950s of village life made by Dr Eskell himself

Remembering Gypsy Petulengro

Walter Lloyd Petulengro, known as 'Gypsy Petulengro' (1859-1957) was a showman, astrologer, radio broadcaster, writer, and herbalist. This exhibition was put on, as part of Heritage Open days, in All Saints Churuch, Viney Hill in the Forest of Dean where he is buried. The sensational 'Gypsy' funeral was internationally reported and captured on film for Movietone News. The exhibition researhed, designed, and staged by Roger Deesks and Jason Griffiths for their Reading the Forest project

Leonard Clark Heritage Open Day Exhibition

Poet and author Leonard Clark (1905-81) grew up in Cinderford writing about the place and people he remembered in a series of memoirs. He was a successful and respected poet, biographer, poetry editor, educationalist, and was awarded an OBE. Though moving away as a young man he frequently returned, much of his published poetry describing the landscape and history of the Forest of Dean. This exhibition was in the church he attended as a child and where part of his ashes are interred. The exhibition was part of Heritage Open Days, and was researched, created, and staged by Roger Deeks and Jason Griffiths as part of the Rading the Forest public history project

"An evening of..." series of three public cultural history lectures each on a Forest of Dean author

These three public lectures engaged and developed an audience for Forest of Dean Literary Heritage, as part of the Reading the Forest project. In part the events were a response to"Some Forest Writers: an evening of readings" held in Cinderford Library in 1974 featuring Harry Beddington, Leonard Clark, Winifred Foley, and Humphrey Phelps. As well as outlining the careers, work, and impact of the writers through lecture, performance and playing or archival recordings, the events engaged participants in memory work relating to the authors, and wider cultural memory of the Forest of Dean

Effector memory differentiation increases detection of replication-competent HIV-l in resting CD4+ T cells from virally suppressed individuals.

Studies have demonstrated that intensive ART alone is not capable of eradicating HIV-1, as the virus rebounds within a few weeks upon treatment interruption. Viral rebound may be induced from several cellular subsets; however, the majority of proviral DNA has been found in antigen experienced resting CD4+ T cells. To achieve a cure for HIV-1, eradication strategies depend upon both understanding mechanisms that drive HIV-1 persistence as well as sensitive assays to measure the frequency of infected cells after therapeutic interventions. Assays such as the quantitative viral outgrowth assay (QVOA) measure HIV-1 persistence during ART by ex vivo activation of resting CD4+ T cells to induce latency reversal; however, recent studies have shown that only a fraction of replication-competent viruses are inducible by primary mitogen stimulation. Previous studies have shown a correlation between the acquisition of effector memory phenotype and HIV-1 latency reversal in quiescent CD4+ T cell subsets that harbor the reservoir. Here, we apply our mechanistic understanding that differentiation into effector memory CD4+ T cells more effectively promotes HIV-1 latency reversal to significantly improve proviral measurements in the QVOA, termed differentiation QVOA (dQVOA), which reveals a significantly higher frequency of the inducible HIV-1 replication-competent reservoir in resting CD4+ T cells