The Nervous State

In this lunchtime session, historian Julie Gottlieb, Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield, and filmmaker Nicola Baldwin, discuss how the rediscovery of a diary written during the Munich Crisis has led them to explore the connections between inner conflict and global crisis, and the resonances between the late 1930s and our own historical moment of crisis.

In the Q&A, we will be discussing how their collaboration resulted in two very different forms: Julie’s academic journal article, ‘An Epidemic of Nervous Breakdowns and Crisis Suicides in Britain’s War of Nerves, 1938–1940’, in the Historical Journal (2024), and Nicola’s film. You can discover more about The Nervous State project here.

About the film

The Nervous State is a short film inspired by Journal Under the Terror, 1938, the published journal of the literary critic F. L. Lucas. It explores Lucas’ growing frustration with Appeasement and the psychological impact of international crisis on his artist wife Prudence Lucas. In his journal, Lucas exposed and commented on the consequences of what Julie Gottlieb describes as the ‘vicarious British experience of fascism’ in continental Europe, culminating in international crises from the Spanish Civil War to Abyssinia and Czechoslovakia, as well as the persecution and dehumanisation of Jews in Europe under Nazi rule. The Nervous State also brings this discussion back to the role of British politicians and intellectuals as agents (or bystanders) in the anti-fascist struggle.

The speakers

Julie Gottlieb is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield. She has published extensively on political extremism, women in politics, and the gendering of international relations in the modern Britain. She is the author of The Culture of Fascism (I.B. Tauris, 2004), Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement 1923-1945 (2000 and second edition 2021) and ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Interwar Britain (2015), as well as a number of edited collections and special issues. She held a Wellcome Seed Award for the project ‘Suicide, Society and Crisis’ (2018-19), and her current research examines an ‘epidemic’ of ‘crisis suicides’ in Britain on the eve of the Second World War. She has appeared regularly in the media — television, radio, podcasts, public events– asked to draw out the resonances and relevance of her various areas of historical research in the face of current crises from Brexit, to the global resurgence of populism and extremism, and the Covid pandemic. 

Nicola Baldwin is a dramatist and director who works in theatre, film, radio and TV. She studied English at UCL and worked as a camera operator and director of music videos. Her plays have been commissioned/ produced by Royal Court, Royal Exchange, Sheffield Crucible, and Bath Theatres. With Furious Theatre she staged new writing events in empty shops and unused spaces.  Recent plays include: Nosocomial, a science fiction drama based on workshops with Healthcare Scientists, which won 2019 CSO ‘Partnering Citizens’ Award of NHS England; We The Young Strongabout far right radicalisation of young women in 1930s.  She has won the George Devine award, Time Out award, and twice been shortlisted for Susan Smith Blackburn and BBC Audio awards. She was Writers’ Tutor at the Royal Court, Associate Lecturer at Drama Centre, and Research Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.  

(Chair) Dr Dina Gusejnova is Associate Professor of International History at LSE and a member of the LSE’s Conflict and Civicness Research group. She has previously been Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Sheffield University and has taught at Queen Mary University of London, UCL, and at the University of Chicago. She is the author of European Elites and Ideas of Empire, 1917-57 (Cambridge University Press 2016). Her current research concentrates on the longer-term impact of the internment of scholars from continental Europe in Britain during the Second World War, on which she has just published, with Kim Wünschmann, ‘A paralegal institution: tribunals and the place of law in the framework of internment during the Second World War’(2025). Dina is currently working on a contemporary research project called Project 2022, supported by the European Commission, which examines the consequences of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine for research and education in Europe.