Daily Telegraph - Commemorations Announcement

[Seadog]

According to this piece the details of the commemorations are to be announced on Monday which I presume means today

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/britain-at-war/10424151/How-Britain-will-mark-Great-War-centenary.html

[Seadog]

Apparently this is what is referred to above

Dated 4/11/13

:

The First World War Centenary Partnership’s Programme presents over 500 new exhibitions, 1,500 events across the country and 700 new digital resources to commemorate the Centenary of the First World War.

http://www.1914.org/events-calendar/

[slick63]

According to this piece the details of the commemorations are to be announced on Monday which I presume means today

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/britain-at-war/10424151/How-Britain-will-mark-Great-War-centenary.html

 A new production of Oh! What A Lovely War, starring Caroline Quentin, to be staged from next February. The anti-war play, written during the 1960s, has been described as having a powerful influence on modern understanding of the conflict.

Oh dear

[David_Underdown]

Well you may not agree with its conclusions, but the statement "a powerful influence on modern understanding of the conflict" can't really be denied. There was an interesting piece in Radio 3's "Nightwaves" on 16 October looking at the original staging - available on iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03cnr02. Apparently they did do a great deal of research into a lot of the material (such as war diaries) that was only just becoming publicly available at the time, though undoubtedly it would also have been influenced by attitudes to the escalating Vietnam War at the time.

[Jack Sheldon]

Brian Bond, writing in the magnificent The Unquiet Western Front (p59) made an interesting point, amongst many other pertinent remarks about OWALW, viz. 'Raymond Fletcher, military commentator for Tribune, Labour MP for Ilkeston from 1964 to 1983 and recently unveiled as a Soviet agent, played an important part in the compilation of the entertainment Oh What a Lovely War. He later described his three hour harangue to the Theatre Workshop Group on the play's message as, 'one part me, one part Liddell Hart, the rest Lenin!'

Jack