The Shakespeare Hut ― A Story of Memory, Performance and Identity, 1916-1923

This book tells the forgotten story of the Shakespeare Hut, a huge, mock-Tudor building for New Zealand Anzac soldiers built in Bloomsbury in 1916 to mark Shakespeare's Tercentenary that year.

With a purpose-built performance space, the stage of which hosted the biggest theatrical stars of the age, and as the only built memorial to Shakespeare in London that materialised that fateful year, the Hut is a unique case study in cultural memory and performance of Shakespeare. One extraordinary building brought together Shakespeare's place in First World War theatre, emerging new post-colonial identities and, finally, the struggle for women's suffrage, as the stage was managed and largely populated by the leading lights of the Actresses' Franchise League.

This is a story of how cultural 'memories' of Shakespeare are created, how the man and the text feature in the most fundamental struggles for identity. During the global upheaval of World War I, this unique space for soldiers, suffragettes and scholars placed Shakespeare's name and work at the centre of defining what it meant to be 'English'.