Francis's work focuses on 20th-century British politics and gender; he has written on the Labour Party, masculinity, leisure, the cultural impact of modern warfare, the emotional economy in British politics, and British cinema. His published works include:
Works
Books
The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force, 1939–1945.
Ideas and Policies under Labour, 1945–1951: Building a New Britain.
"Economics and Ethics: the Nature of Labour's Socialism, 1945–51", Twentieth Century British History, vol. 6, no.2.
"A Socialist Policy for Education?: Labour and the Secondary School, 1945–1951", History of Education, vol. 24, no.3.
"'Not Reformed Capitalism, but... Democratic Socialism': The Ideology of the Labour Leadership, 1945-51", in Harriet Jones and Michael Kandiah, The Myth of Consensus.
"'Mr. Gaitskell's Ganymede'?: Reassessing Crosland's Future of Socialism ", Contemporary British History, vol. 11m no.2.
"The Labour Party: Modernisation and the Politics of Restraint", in Frank Mort, Becky Conekin and Chris Waters, Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain, 1945–64.
"Leisure and Popular Culture", in Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Women in Twentieth Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change.
"Tears, Tantrums and Bared Teeth: The Emotional Economy of Three Conservative Prime Ministers, 1951–1964", Journal of British Studies, vol. 41, no.3.
"The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity", Historical Journal, vol. 45, no.3.
"Cecil Beaton’s Romantic Toryism and the Symbolic Economy of Wartime Britain", Journal of British Studies, vol. 45, no.1.
"A Flight from Commitment? Domesticity, Adventure and the Masculine Imaginary in Postwar Britain", Gender and History, vol. 19, no.1.
"Men of the Royal Air Force, the Cultural Memory of World War Two and the Twilight of the British Empire", in Sue Grayzel and Philippa Levine, Gender, Labour, War and Empire: Essays on Modern Britain in honour of Sonya Rose.
"Remembering War, Forgetting Empire: Cinematic Representations of the North African Campaign in the Era of Decolonization", in Lucy Noakes and Juliette Pattinson, The Cultural Memory of the Second World War in Britain.
"Attending to Ghosts: Some Reflections on the Disavowals of British Great War Historiography", Twentieth Century British History, vol. 25, no. 3.
