One hundred years after the start of the First World War, few Cambridge residents are likely to be aware that the University Library stands on the site of a former military hospital. The First Eastern General, set up within days of the outbreak of the war, treated tens of thousands of returning casualties between 1914 and 1919.
Dr Sarah Baylis looks at the lost history of the First Easter, examining what life was like is this 'small city on the Backs', its impact on Cambridge and how it was possible that a building of such significance should have been so widely forgotten. It underlines the military hospital's central role in Cambridge as a site of profound individual and collective experience.
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