The Poetry School has been given permission by the Imperial War Museum for a public screening of the Battle of the Somme film at the Cinema Museum, London on Saturday 4th February 2017. A group of ten poets, including myself, guided by Simon Barraclough and Julia Bird, have been working on poems written in response to…
I’ve been doing some more reading and research after last week’s blog post on Sdney Greenfield. He was awarded the MC in July 1918. The citation as published in the London Gazette on 18th July reads “2nd Lt. Sidney Richard, Greenfield, North’d Fus. For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. As intelligence officer,when all communications…
During this year’s battlefield’s tour with Jeremy Banning we went back to the area around the Wancourt tower above the river Cojeul. I had a vivid memory from a previous occasion of Jeremy reading Second Lieutenant Sidney Greenfield’s account of part of the battle of Arras and the capture of the tower. This October as…
This year’s annual trip to the Somme battlefields included a visit to the Cambrai memorial at Louverval. I’ve written about Charles Jagger previously on this blog and about his work in poems in Voices from Stone and Bronze so I was keen to see the two Portland stone reliefs which he’d created for the memorial.…
October has been a busy and productive month with four readings, culminating in the launch event for the CEGC ‘Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict’ project in the Maughan libraryat King’s College London. I read three commissioned poems, inspired by the lives of Wanda Gertz and Frederik van Eeden. The other poets were…
For me the most poignant part of the Somme Commemoration from Thiepval was Charles Dance, standing under the great arch and reading Aftermath by Siegfried Sassoon. Aftermath Have you forgotten yet?… For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city…
As I have been writing this blog post I came across my hand-written notes from October 2013 when Jeremy Banning first took me and other writers to Pigeon Ravine and I found Louis Doffman amongst the graves. I can’t remember now whether it was Jeremy who pointed out his headstone (as is his habit of…
The Menin Gate Memorial is where my great uncle Victor’s name is inscribed as one of the 54,389 men who are commemorated here. When I use the words ‘great uncle’ about someone who died nearly a hundred years ago your mind will probably conjure up an image of an elderly gentleman with Edwardian sideburns. Victor…
For this second post in my series about war memorials I’ve chosen Charles Sargeant Jagger, the sculptor who was responsible for many of them. Jagger was 28 years old when the war began and had studied at the Royal College of Art. He’d been a gifted student and had been awarded a scholarship to study…
“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers,who sent their sons…