'To make the past present, to bring the distant near': affective history and historical distance in the war that changed us

The television documentary-drama The War That Changed Us (TWTCU, 2014), one of the first publicly funded commemorations of the centenary of the First World War, traces the transformative experiences of six Australians in the war. It does so with a narrative guided by the dramatisation of diaries and letters against a backdrop of archival film and photographs and commentary from historians. This article analyses how the program’s focus on the evocation of emotions, empathy and personal stories brings the past near for a twenty-first-century viewing audience with no living memory of the war. It thus addresses the relationship of TWTCU’s examination of the inherent drama and pathos of the First World War, with docudrama and affective history.