Over 100,000 Scotsman were killed in the First World War, with a devastating impact on their families and communities. Thousands of war memorials were erected in the two decades after the end of the war. This lecture will discuss some of the forgotten religious messaging of Scotland’s Great War memorials, and look in detail at one of the most spectacular war memorials in Britain: the Greenock memorial in Renfrewshire.
James MacLeod was educated at Greenock Academy and the University of Edinburgh, receiving an MA in 1988 and a PhD in 1993. Since 1994 he has been a member of the History Department at the University of Evansville, Indiana, where he is Chair of History and teaches courses in European History and the two World Wars. He has been teaching and researching the First World War for over 20 years. Dr MacLeod is the author of four books and over 30 other scholarly publications. He has delivered hundreds of public lectures and has won many awards for his teaching and scholarship. His grandfather, Kenneth McRae, served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War.