Show Notes
In this special episode with Professor Mark Connelly we explore the profound connection between landscape, memory, and national identity during the Great War, focusing on the significance of chalk landscapes in Britain and their influence on cultural memory and battlefield symbolism. We dive into how the beautiful, chalky terrains of England shaped the identity of soldiers during the Great War. Many of them carried an intimate knowledge of these landscapes, a connection forged through literat...
More from The Old Front Line
As the Battle of the Somme entered its final, bitter weeks, fighting continued across the ground between Thiepval, Grandcourt and Courcelette. In this episode of The Old Front Line, we explore the October and November 1916 battles as autumn turned to winter and the Somme battlefield became a landscape of mud, rain and continuous shell craters. We follow the fighting, examining the attacks around Regina Trench, Stuff Trench, Grandcourt and Courcelette, and the challenges faced by British and C...
In this Old Front Line Q&A, we explore four fascinating questions from the First World War, taking us from the Ypres Salient to German-occupied France and Belgium, and from wartime prisoners to the fate of battlefield cemeteries during the Second World War. We begin in the Ypres Salient and the often-overlooked French presence in 1914–15. When did French troops arrive, how was the Allied sector divided, why did the British eventually take over, and what was the relationship between French...
Between August and December 1914, the British Expeditionary Force fought its first battles of the First World War across Belgium and northern France and some 19,000 officers and men were missing. From Mons and Le Cateau to the Retreat and the First Battle of Ypres, thousands of men were killed and never recovered, becoming part of the great story of the Missing of 1914. In this episode of The Old Front Line, we explore the history behind the 1914 campaign and discuss the memorials that commem...
In this episode of The Old Front Line Podcast, we answer another fascinating selection of listener questions that explore the realities of life, death, remembrance and battlefield tactics on the Western Front during the First World War. How much safer were soldiers when they left the front line? We examine the British Army's system of rotating troops through front-line, support and reserve positions, and ask whether moving away from the trenches really improved a soldier's chances of survival...
The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing is the largest British war memorial in the world and one of the most powerful places where we remember the sacrifice of the Missing on the Western Front. In this episode, we explore the story behind "Mighty Thiepval" and uncover why this iconic monument continues to resonate more than a century after the Battle of the Somme. We begin by examining the strategic importance of the village of Thiepval during the fighting up to 1916, and why it became one of th...