:00:00. > :00:00.say that a doctor who treated a Liberian suffering from the Ebola
:00:00. > :00:20.virus has contracted the disease. An earthquake has killed at least 398
:00:21. > :00:39.people in south`west China. Time for a look at the front pages. Thank you
:00:40. > :00:43.for joining us. Familiar faces. It comes as no surprise what is on the
:00:44. > :00:50.front pages but what is interesting are the images that are selected of
:00:51. > :00:55.the commemorations marking the centenary of World War I. There are
:00:56. > :01:03.so many pictures that could have been chosen. The Express: The day
:01:04. > :01:08.the world remembered them. When you have a tabloid newspaper, there are
:01:09. > :01:13.simple choices for the front page picture, because it is mainly the
:01:14. > :01:18.picture that sells the paper. Pictures with bright colours always
:01:19. > :01:21.do better. When you have an opportunity to use something that
:01:22. > :01:25.has a lot of the colour red in it, it is an opportunity that photo
:01:26. > :01:32.editors grab it with both hands. And the Daily Star has exactly the same
:01:33. > :01:41.shop. But then you go on to something like the Metro, they have
:01:42. > :01:44.gone for a picture of the Duchess of Cambridge laying a wreath in
:01:45. > :01:53.Belgium. And the Daily Mail have done it again. A picture of Kate and
:01:54. > :01:58.Harry and the Archbishop of Canterbury in darkness. The Mirror
:01:59. > :02:06.have chosen very dark pictures of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.
:02:07. > :02:17.Let's look at the images the papers have chosen. Red poppies raining
:02:18. > :02:20.down in Dorset. And clearly in the uniforms that were worn by so many
:02:21. > :02:29.men that went into a war they really believed they could win. And so many
:02:30. > :02:33.of them were signing up but none of them could have had any idea what
:02:34. > :02:38.they were heading into. That is the difficulty with this. This is about
:02:39. > :02:46.a myth, it is not about historian. I'm sorry to go through this. Every
:02:47. > :02:51.editorial piece today, there was always one fact that was inevitably
:02:52. > :02:56.wrong. What happened here was that these people were a national army,
:02:57. > :02:59.they were an army that was configured to be in colonial wars
:03:00. > :03:04.like the Boer War, where they did not do so well. They had been
:03:05. > :03:12.thoroughly reformed and they went to fight row in France and took a
:03:13. > :03:18.tasting. The casualty levels `` they took a beating. The casualty levels
:03:19. > :03:21.really shocked the politicians. Within three weeks. It was the
:03:22. > :03:27.Battle of Mons and then the long retreat, where the brunt was born by
:03:28. > :03:34.the French. We are not hearing too much about that. The brunt on the
:03:35. > :03:39.east was born by the Russians. But the British plug the line and by the
:03:40. > :03:46.subsequent spring, that army was broken and it was finished. And it
:03:47. > :03:54.was finished at Ypres. That is their history. But this myth is, oh, what
:03:55. > :03:59.a lovely war and the last great scene of Blackadder goes Forth. That
:04:00. > :04:04.is the iconography. We are looking back at the beginning of a war from
:04:05. > :04:07.a very long distance. This was the piece that I wrote in the Evening
:04:08. > :04:12.Standard. The unfinished business is coming up. It comes up in a lot of
:04:13. > :04:19.the copy but the finest piece that I have read was one written by one of
:04:20. > :04:24.the oldest historians, Sir Michael Howard, who said that actually, when
:04:25. > :04:30.people went to war, not particularly the Britons but the Germans, some
:04:31. > :04:34.French, they were welcoming the war. They thought it was going to be real
:04:35. > :04:38.excitement. They were going to settle the old scores and it would
:04:39. > :04:44.be over by Christmas. And had it been over by Christmas, we would not
:04:45. > :04:48.have got the result many were really wanting. I find it very moving
:04:49. > :04:54.because we are trying to take a snapshot of an age and yet the more
:04:55. > :05:00.you turn the prison, when you look 360 degrees, it was not a happy
:05:01. > :05:04.Europe, it was a Europe that was quarrelling with its self, where a
:05:05. > :05:08.small fights have been doused down for about 20 years before and
:05:09. > :05:13.suddenly it exploded into this and went on for longer and deeper and
:05:14. > :05:18.indeed, the world changed. Now, why the world changed I think is going
:05:19. > :05:20.to be a big thing that we will come up to as we go through the various
:05:21. > :05:25.stages of these commemorations. And we will be looking at the First
:05:26. > :05:28.World War in an area that I do find fascinating because it is not
:05:29. > :05:33.static, this picture. We will have a different view of the road and
:05:34. > :05:40.ourselves by the time we come to 2018. `` a different view of the war
:05:41. > :05:45.and ourselves. By the end of the war, we found out about the truth of
:05:46. > :05:51.the concentration camps. World War II. And that was used as a form of
:05:52. > :05:56.justification, a revisionist justification to justify why we had
:05:57. > :06:00.been fighting. World War I has the same revisionism. Because World War
:06:01. > :06:03.II was a justified war, we like to use that to justify even further
:06:04. > :06:08.back in history World War I, to say oh, it was the Germans again and the
:06:09. > :06:13.same kind of thing will stop and culturally, it becomes part of the
:06:14. > :06:17.same messy thing. I think that is the most powerful element in this
:06:18. > :06:18.because what you get out of this, and you are quite right in that in
:06:19. > :06:53.the very end, was the Second World War where a
:06:54. > :07:03.great journalist, one of the heroes of our trade, did a book called the
:07:04. > :07:06.The Good War. The Second World War could be the good war and it
:07:07. > :07:10.coloured this one because if you look at the way this was regarded in
:07:11. > :07:13.the immediate aftermath, particularly to one of my
:07:14. > :07:20.grandfathers, who was horribly injured in the most terrible
:07:21. > :07:24.fashion, you lived in misery, that this was the bad war and that no
:07:25. > :07:29.good came of it and no good came of the conduct of... David Cameron
:07:30. > :07:37.described World War I as one of the most is not the most horrific war
:07:38. > :07:45.ever. But he also said... But why do we think that this war? Yes, the
:07:46. > :07:52.experience. It is Blackadder, it is the Somme, but why do we say that it
:07:53. > :07:55.is worse than any other thing? I suppose they were not in lines of
:07:56. > :07:59.trenches but look at the levels of attrition in the American civil
:08:00. > :08:03.war. It is not trivial to bring that out because the American papers have
:08:04. > :08:06.been dealing with the 150th anniversary of the American civil
:08:07. > :08:11.war, which took out somebody in almost every family. And very
:08:12. > :08:15.intelligently as well. I didn't think that there has been real
:08:16. > :08:19.thought put into these papers, how to balance it and how to give the
:08:20. > :08:24.image. It is not celebratory in any way, which people had feared. But
:08:25. > :08:36.how do you do the commemoration, particularly in view of you dies? We
:08:37. > :08:39.have seen the images of the reconciliation between the European
:08:40. > :08:43.leaders... Let's look at the Metro because that is a particular moment.
:08:44. > :08:48.And in one way, one of the young members of the Royal family on the
:08:49. > :08:53.front plate will appeal to some of the younger readers. It comes down
:08:54. > :08:58.to in the end trying to get a very complicated series of not one event
:08:59. > :09:01.but many others across using just one photograph. It boils down to
:09:02. > :09:05.show business in the end and that is what the Duchess of Cambridge
:09:06. > :09:09.represents. She represents a kind of a younger generation of Britain, a
:09:10. > :09:16.hope for a future. She is a mother and all the rest of it. I could not
:09:17. > :09:23.agree more. And she is used to say, oh, don't we feel dreadful. But she
:09:24. > :09:27.is very pretty. If William had married a German princess, I don't
:09:28. > :09:34.think she would be used in the same way. Then again, in 1917, the Royal
:09:35. > :09:38.Family changed its name because they did not want to sound Germany any
:09:39. > :09:42.more. This was one family that has spread its tentacles across Europe,
:09:43. > :09:47.which then started fighting, the statesman paid into it, the
:09:48. > :09:51.politicians got into it, busy telling these nations that they
:09:52. > :09:54.needed to start fighting. And now we have politicians like David Cameron
:09:55. > :09:59.and Michael Gove saying this was a justified sacrifice. 100 years on,
:10:00. > :10:08.they are trying to justify the death of 17 million men stop I'm not there
:10:09. > :10:12.is a way to do it. Another photograph of a member of the Royal
:10:13. > :10:16.family. This is all incredibly important as well. And you think of
:10:17. > :10:21.some of the surveys that came out on the last Remembrance Day. Many young
:10:22. > :10:26.people were confused about what the Hoppy represented, why you had to
:10:27. > :10:32.wear it, what war it was from. `` being poppy. Was it to remember
:10:33. > :10:38.sacrifice or a piece? Images like this might draw in some of those
:10:39. > :10:48.people. It is a good point. I'm slightly involved in all of this as
:10:49. > :10:54.Commissioner of Commonwealth War Graves. And the issue with schools,
:10:55. > :10:59.because it is on the curriculum, there is a great deal of interest.
:11:00. > :11:05.And the interest index went right up but the basis of knowledge was, as
:11:06. > :11:11.you say, astonishingly low. He is very interesting. I think that the
:11:12. > :11:15.Royal family have orchestrated this very well and very subtly because
:11:16. > :11:20.they are also sharing the load, the young royals, in doing the really
:11:21. > :11:28.important commemoration is of the Second World War. Why are they
:11:29. > :11:34.important? The last big ones were D`Day. It is the last time you will
:11:35. > :11:40.have veterans who have real memories. They were saying to me
:11:41. > :11:44.that they will not turn up again. He is quite extraordinary. With
:11:45. > :11:52.veterans, he has his mother's touch. At Casino, you made it clear...
:11:53. > :11:57.There were a lot of New Zealand fighters. They had a terrible time.
:11:58. > :12:00.The veterans from New Zealand got a lot of stick. He made it clear to
:12:01. > :12:04.every single veteran that if they wanted to talk to him, he would find
:12:05. > :12:08.the time to talk to them full of the must have spoken with more than 200
:12:09. > :12:12.in the space of a few days. He is very important. We have seen the
:12:13. > :12:14.three principles. Harry, his brother and his sister`in`law. And they will
:12:15. > :12:30.be going Gallipoli. An image with the Archbishop of
:12:31. > :12:36.Canterbury as well and there with the lanterns which have been the
:12:37. > :12:41.focus of the this evening. Between these newspapers, coming back to the
:12:42. > :12:44.reason why tabloids, the most successful newspapers, choose a
:12:45. > :12:48.particular story on the front page, the Sun is generally read by young
:12:49. > :12:54.men. They can identify more with Harry than anyone. He is a veteran,
:12:55. > :12:59.a member of the military. The story they have got a letter he has
:13:00. > :13:06.written, says, if we get bowled out there is nothing for it. They can
:13:07. > :13:13.relate. Other newspapers comment on the officer class. Broadsheets speak
:13:14. > :13:17.about David Cameron's uncle who was lost in the war. That isn't to say
:13:18. > :13:22.an officer dying isn't worse than Tommy dying. It means that some
:13:23. > :13:27.papers focus on the working`class element and others for the kind of
:13:28. > :13:33.people of a class who made decisions at the time. The Daily Mail goes for
:13:34. > :13:40.a younger man and woman and an older man, more family focused. Briefly,
:13:41. > :13:45.let's look at the Independent, which always tries to be different. In
:13:46. > :13:55.effect, the front page looks like it's turned off its own lights. It
:13:56. > :14:02.is similar to the Mirror. The story of the unknown warrior is one of the
:14:03. > :14:08.most moving parts. They easy and four bodies, perhaps Guardsmen, they
:14:09. > :14:18.chose one at random, brought him home and buried him in Westminster
:14:19. > :14:29.Abbey. It was an amazing thing. It was a catharsis. This is Sebastien
:14:30. > :14:37.for a looks's paper, Birdsong `` Faulks. It is a deft touch. What I
:14:38. > :14:42.do think though, speaking of the Unknown Warrior, such is the
:14:43. > :14:47.technology today, if we were to start again, you could find out
:14:48. > :14:55.exactly who it was. I went to the laboratory of the Dutch war dead,
:14:56. > :14:59.who recover 40 Khedive as per year from World War II and they were
:15:00. > :15:06.getting people from the Warwickshire Regiment and they could say that we
:15:07. > :15:27.grew up on the borders of summer `` Somerset and so on. `` . I like the
:15:28. > :15:33.argument between the poets, the correspondence and the public and
:15:34. > :15:38.the posh historians, and the posh historians aren't having their own
:15:39. > :15:44.way on this. Let's move on to the Guardian. They are doing something
:15:45. > :15:49.clever, they have tried to make what happened to count for something that
:15:50. > :15:55.is happening today, linking the conflict around us in the Middle
:15:56. > :16:02.East and asking, well saving, we have had a century to count the cost
:16:03. > :16:05.of war. For those who don't know, the end of the Foles toward war is
:16:06. > :16:13.when Britain started occupying Palestine. It created a lot of what
:16:14. > :16:21.we are looking at now with ISIS producing a caliphate. The
:16:22. > :16:31.Guardian's copy comes down to celebrity. We have the historian,
:16:32. > :16:35.Dan snow, no rating. You have got one particular relative of the
:16:36. > :16:39.16`year`old who was scouted and shot, reading from his mother's
:16:40. > :16:48.letter to the War office, asking for news of his son `` Dan Snow,
:16:49. > :16:52.narrating. They are used as an afterthought, the Tommy, the average
:16:53. > :16:59.person, is used to tail off at the end. The majority of the stories are
:17:00. > :17:05.about celebrity, showbiz, someone from... There isn't any reason to
:17:06. > :17:12.have that. When it becomes your sole focus, it takes the mood away. It
:17:13. > :17:19.oversimplifies it. The times have been even bolder than the Guardian
:17:20. > :17:26.and they have tried to bring the commemorations and make them more
:17:27. > :17:34.relevant. A slender branch of hope. I couldn't find the hope in all of
:17:35. > :17:43.this. The ceasefire that has been announced tonight. It is giving a
:17:44. > :17:48.reflection of the mood in Glasgow. With the Commonwealth Games and the
:17:49. > :17:54.service in the cathedral. As you say, quite rightly, he was trying to
:17:55. > :17:58.look for the no more War message that he hopes will get through to
:17:59. > :18:06.Gaza `` war. It will be very interesting. The bit I thought might
:18:07. > :18:14.come up, which will come up soon, is the way, of course we will have
:18:15. > :18:17.terrible things, but war changed by dimension in a huge degree and
:18:18. > :18:25.someone did it today, I saw in an inside page, they had the nearest
:18:26. > :18:33.thing to a biplane. By the end, it became a very big air war. On the
:18:34. > :18:39.1st of April, 1918, you have the foundation of the RA at, the first
:18:40. > :18:47.independent air force in the world `` RAF. This changes everything for
:18:48. > :18:54.the worse because you get hundreds, thousands, millions of civilians.
:18:55. > :19:04.Some of the things we have seen in Gaza to a great scale. It is very
:19:05. > :19:07.difficult as you say, this enormous portmanteau of half memories, to
:19:08. > :19:15.simplify and get a straight narrative. Do you think that we got
:19:16. > :19:22.the coverage right? So many events and thoughts to mark. These are just
:19:23. > :19:25.the front pages, this is a snapshot. You would have to read everything
:19:26. > :19:29.and even then you would only have a snippet of what you have got. I
:19:30. > :19:36.don't have the same optimism that after four years of going over the
:19:37. > :19:41.anniversaries, that as a culture, we will have a better grasp of what the
:19:42. > :19:50.First World War involved. We had a new RAF, we got new pilot, zips,
:19:51. > :19:56.teabags, lots of things. Thank you for your thoughts and for taking us
:19:57. > :20:07.through the papers for tomorrow. Thanks to you for joining us.
:20:08. > :20:12.Thanks for tuning into the latest thoughts for the weather prospect
:20:13. > :20:18.for the rest of the week, the weekend and beyond. There is
:20:19. > :20:19.something interesting for the second half of the weekend,