“Another Weekend Away Looking for Dead Bodies…”: Battlefield Tourism on the Somme and in Flanders

Abstract

This article reports a phenomenological investigation into the perspectives and experiences of battlefield tourists visiting the landscapes of the Western Front, the setting of trench warfare in the Great War of 1914–1918. Based on a small scale, participant observational methodology the study provides insights into the appeals of the First World War landscapes to visitors in the 1990s, suggests how these appeals may differ in quality and intensity among different groups, and how the tourism preferences of groups may be intrinsically linked to other aspects of their life experiences and leisure behaviour.