Browse content similar to 31/10/2013. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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Britain, an Italian poet and Afghanistan, as well as a story of | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
First World War cemeteries and a biography of Margaret Thatcher. We | :00:00. | :00:08. | |
have been speaking to each of the nominees. | :00:09. | :00:25. | |
For almost a century, war cemeteries like these have been some of the | :00:26. | :00:28. | |
most poignant memorials of the First World War. You will find all over | :00:29. | :00:33. | |
the world, wherever soldiers from Britain and its empire fought, but | :00:34. | :00:37. | |
the greatest concentration and lie along Western front in Belgium. This | :00:38. | :00:48. | |
is the central character in Empires Of The Dead. . We spoke to the | :00:49. | :00:56. | |
author. He was an unemployed journalist at the outbreak of the | :00:57. | :01:00. | |
First World War. He was too old to fight and desperate to play some | :01:01. | :01:05. | |
part. He had been warning the country against this war for the | :01:06. | :01:10. | |
last ten years. He went over to France first as a volunteer as a | :01:11. | :01:16. | |
member of the mobile ambulance unit. From those very humble and | :01:17. | :01:24. | |
almost accidental beginnings, he developed his interest in the work | :01:25. | :01:35. | |
that eventually blossomed into the Commonwealth Imperial walk grades | :01:36. | :01:41. | |
commission. That existed in embryo as early as 1916 or 1917. It took | :01:42. | :01:49. | |
very important `` two very important decisions. One was that none of the | :01:50. | :01:53. | |
dead British soldiers were to be repaid to did. The other was that | :01:54. | :01:56. | |
they would all be commemorated side`by`side. Officers and men | :01:57. | :02:02. | |
alike, as close to the battlefield where they fell. Why were those | :02:03. | :02:07. | |
decisions taken, and why were they so controversial? If you had allowed | :02:08. | :02:13. | |
a freedom of choice with the gravestones or other commemoratives | :02:14. | :02:15. | |
memorials, the rich would have buried in one way and the poor in | :02:16. | :02:22. | |
another, and we would have had a hierarchy of commemoration that was | :02:23. | :02:25. | |
the absolute opposite of everything he was striving for. From the | :02:26. | :02:30. | |
perspective of now, it seems that where the cemeteries we have our | :02:31. | :02:36. | |
self evidently the answer to the slaughter on the industrial scale of | :02:37. | :02:39. | |
the First World War. But for families, particularly those with | :02:40. | :02:44. | |
deeply Christian feelings, the idea that their sons or their husbands or | :02:45. | :02:48. | |
their fathers should be buried in this uniform way, in this Prussian | :02:49. | :02:59. | |
cemetery that was being planned, with absolute anathema. There is one | :03:00. | :03:06. | |
memorial cupboard with more than 70,000 names, you suggest in the | :03:07. | :03:12. | |
book is a front in kind to most of the cemeteries that the War Graves | :03:13. | :03:16. | |
commission erected. Why is that different? The memorial poses | :03:17. | :03:23. | |
different questions, and suggests more complex responses to the | :03:24. | :03:29. | |
slaughter of the Somme than any other memorial does. The arches that | :03:30. | :03:38. | |
disappear in to the fault of the sky just leaves one with an appalling | :03:39. | :03:42. | |
sense of loss. You look at that monument and you think, what kind of | :03:43. | :03:47. | |
government could have done this? Thank you. | :03:48. | :03:56. | |
Tomorrow, Nick Higham will be talking to Charlotte Higgins, author | :03:57. | :04:02. | |
of Under Another Skype, Journeys In Roman | :04:03. | :04:03. |