Jubilant crowds greet Neville Chamberlain at 10 Downing Street on the night of 30 September. Peter Lucas did not share their feelings. Courtesy of the Neville Chamberlain Papers, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

Frank Laurence Lucas c. 1930, King’s College Cambridge Archive

Join us for a preview screening of Nicola Baldwin’s short film The Nervous State hosted by Julie V. Gottlieb, Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield.

The film showing will be followed by a discussion about dramatising history, the film’s message to the present, and the resonances between the late 1930s and our own moment of ‘permacrisis’ with panellists Prof. Matthew Stibbe (Sheffield Hallam University), Prof. Maiken Umbach (University of Nottingham and Nottingham Holocaust Museum and Center), Dr Jacqui Turner (University of Reading) and playwright and filmmaker Nicola Baldwin. The panel will be chaired by Prof. Lucy Noakes, (university of Essex and president-elect for the Royal Historical Society).

The Nervous State is a short film inspired by Journal Under the Terror, 1938 the published journal of F. L. Lucas. Previously adapted by Nicola as a play, it explores Lucas’ growing frustration with Appeasement and psychological impact of international crisis on his artist wife Prudence Lucas.

While Lucas was not alone in exposing the terrifying persecution and dehumanisation of Jews in Nazi Europe, too many of his contemporaries said little or nothing at all. Again and again, in his Journal Peter exposed stories of individual suffering and humiliation that spoke for the systematic expulsion of Jews from public life, and that foretold the Holocaust. This theme is evocatively represented in “The Nervous State” and brings the discussion back to the role of British politicians and intellectuals as agents (or bystanders) in the anti-fascist struggle.

This event is part of a collaboration between Prof. Gottlieb and Nicola Baldwin exploring the use of theatre and film to teach the psychological history of appeasement. You can discover more about The Nervous State project here.