The Social History Society is pleased to learn that Rowan Thompson has won the Sir Julian Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History for the article ‘No more parades? Navy Weeks, naval theatre, and navalism, 1927–38’.

The Sir Julian Corbett Prize is awarded by the Academic Trust Funds Committee, on the recommendation of the Institute of Historical Research. It rewards original research connected to naval history from the fifth century to the modern day.

Rowan’s article examines the annual celebration of Navy Weeks from 1927–38. Held in Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham, Navy Weeks were used to promote navy’s role in the preservation of nation and empire. They revolved around themes of heritage and tradition, but were also an important site of modernity, technological innovation, and military prestige. The articl

e argues that they provide a lens into popular civic ritual in interwar Britain – and the continuation of military traditions after the First World War.

We are delighted that the Social History Society played a small role in the making of the article. In 2021, Rowan received one of our small grants, allowing him to carry out research at the National Maritime Museum, the British Library, the Imperial War Museum and the Medway Archives Centre. Rowan found an array of Navy Week ephemera (including souvenir programmes, photographs, posters, leaflets, postcards, oral testimonies, and personal diaries), providing a sense of how the British public interacted with cultural constructions of the navy in a period of supposed naval decline.

Rowan told us:

The research grant awarded by the Social History Society significantly strengthened my research project and eventual article. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Society for its generous financial support.”

You can read Rowan’s prize-winning article here.