He composed it in 1914, just as Europe was teetering on the edge of the abyss of the First World War. Yet this music could not be further from the sinister rumble of imminent battle that appears in Gustav Holst’s equally memorable Mars, God of War, in The Planets suite. Instead it evokes a tranquil time when Britain was riding high, having mastered the secrets of the Industrial Revolution, and memories of Queen Victoria’s sixty-four-year reign were still fresh. Yet whole countries were now sleepwalking into a conflict that would wipe out a generation.
As that war broke out, Vaughan Williams was on holiday in Margate, and Royal Navy ships were gathering offshore. It is said that somebody spotted him scribbling notes for a composition and mistook him for a German spy writing secret messages, so that a policeman promptly arrested him. He was later released.
I was still a child when my mother stopped what she was doing in the kitchen, turned up the radio and said, ‘Listen to this!’ as The Lark Ascending began. Naturally I was busy imagining a skylark singing as it rose up into the sky, an image so exquisitely conjured up by the notes of a violin. But she told me then it spoke of an innocent era when everyone was unaware of the horrors that were to come. Of course, there were plenty of other troubles in our society at the time, but all were eclipsed by the Great War.
Years later I was in Ypres, in Belgium, with my girlfriend at the time, visiting one of the great battlefields of the First World War where 300,000 British and Commonwealth troops died. A group of aged veteran soldiers stood or sat in wheelchairs, looking down, lost in thought, on one of the original trenches that had been preserved. A Scots piper played a lament on the bagpipes and a breeze whispered softly through the trees. When the piper finished, there was absolute silence, save for the song of a lark, ascending into that blue Belgian sky, soaring above the ground where so many had perished, so many years ago.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR – A TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS
DATE EVENT
28/06/1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
28/07/1914 Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.
03/08/1914 Germany declares war on France and Belgium.
04/08/1914 Britain declares war on Germany.
12/08/1914 Britain declares war on Austria-Hungary.
22/11/1914 Trenches are established along the entire Western Front.
19/01/1915 Germany’s first Zeppelin attack on British soil takes place, killing five civilians.
22/04/1915 Second Battle of Ypes begins with the first use of poison gas by Germany.
25/04/1915 Battle of Gallipoli begins.
23/05/1915 Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary.
25/05/1915 Prime Minister Asquith creates a new coalition government.
31/05/1915 The first Zeppelin raid on London kills seven and injures 35.
25/09/1915 At the Battle of Loos, the British use poison gas for the first time.
07/12/1915 British evacuation from Gallipoli begins.
27/01/1916 Conscription introduced in Britain.
01/07/1916 The first day of the Battle of the Somme; over 19,000 British soldiers are killed.
02/09/1916 The first Zeppelin is shot down over Britain.
18/11/1916 Battle of the Somme ends without a clear victor.
15/03/1917 Tsar Nicholas II abdicates.
06/04/1917 US declares war on Germany.
13/06/1917 Germans launch the first major aircraft raid over London; 162 people are killed and 432 injured.
12/10/1917 The British launch their latest assaults at Ypres against the Passchendaele Ridge.
19/10/1917 The last airship raid on Britain is carried out by 11 Zeppelins.
26/10/1917 The Second Battle of Passchendaele begins with 20,000 men of the Third and Fourth Canadian Divisions advancing up the hills of the salient. It cost the Allies 12,000 casualties for a gain of a few hundred yards.
21/03/1918 Second Battle of the Somme, marked by the German Spring Offensive, the ‘Kaiserschlacht’. Germans attack along a 50-mile front south of Arras.
05/04/1918 Germany calls off Operation Michael, ending the Second Battle of the Somme.
19/05/1918 33 German aircraft launch a final raid on London. 49 civilians are killed and 177 wounded.
10/10/1918 Allied victory at the Battle of Saint-Quentin Canal pierces the Hindenburg Line.
03/10/1918 Germany asks the Allies for an armistice.
08/11/1918 Armistice negotiations between the Allies and Germany begin in Ferdinand Foch’s railway carriage HQ at Compiègne.
09/11/1918 Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates and flees to Holland.
11/11/1918 Armistice Day. The Armistice is signed at 5.00 a.m. and comes into effect at 11.00 a.m. Canadian Private George Lawrence Price is the last soldier to die in action on the Western Front, at 10.57 a.m.
29/06/1919 Treaty of Versailles signed.
WIRE by Paul Nash.
GASSED by John Singer Sargent. See here for Shirley Hughes’s introduction.
MAP READING by Stanley Spencer. See here for Lissa Evans’s introduction.
TRAVOYS ARRIVING WITH WOUNDED AT A DRESSING-STATION AT SMOL, MACEDONIA, SEPTEMBER 1916 by Stanley Spencer. See here for Clare Morpurgo’s introduction.
From WAR GAME by Michael Foreman. See here for an extract and Michael’s introduction.
CANARY by Emma Chichester Clark. See here for Emma’s introduction to BIRDSONG by Sebastian Faulks.
FRENCH TROOPS RESTING by Christopher Nevinson.
USEFUL WEBSITES
BBC WWI Centenary website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/remembrance/
A Multimedia History of WWI:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/
The British Library:
http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one
THE FIGHTING
Battlefields on the Western Front: http://www.greatwar.co.uk/
The German U-boats of both World Wars: http://www.uboat.net/
Aviation: http://www.wwiaviation.com
THE PEOPLE
The British Army in WW1: http://www.1914-1918.net/
Articles about those who served during the world wars:
http://blog.guidedbattlefieldtours.co.uk/
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps: http://www.anzacs.net/
The Christmas Truce: http://www.christmastruce.co.uk/
POETRY
The War Poets Association: http://www.warpoets.org/
PHOTOGRAPHY
The WWI Document Archive:
http://www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm
ART
Sandham Memorial Chapel:
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sandham-memorial-chapel/
AFTER
After the War: www.aftermathww1.com
Contributors
HRH The Duchess of Cornwall is married to HRH The Prince of Wales. Her Royal Highness supports many charities as Patron or President, and has a particular focus on those which promote reading and writing.
Jenny Agutter is an actress who came to the British public’s attention in The Railway Children. She has worked in film, television and theatre (winning an Emmy for her role in The Snow Goose and a BAFTA for Equus). She plays Sister Julienne in the BBC1 drama Call the Midwife. In 2012 she received an OBE for her services to charity.
David Almond is an award-winning children’s author. His first novel, Skellig, won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. His other books have received the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Gold and Silver Awards), the Whitbread Children’s Book Award, and have twice been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
Lord Paddy Ashdown is a politician and diplomat who served as Member of Parliament for Yeovil (1983–2001), leader of the Liberal Democrats (1988–99) and the International Community’s High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina (2002–6). He is Chair of the Liberal Democrats 2015 General Election Team and has written several books on his life in politics and political history; the most recent, The Cruel Victory, was publish
ed in June 2014.
Sir Roger Bannister is a former athlete, doctor and academic. He was the first man to run a mile in under four minutes before becoming a distinguished neurologist and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford. He was knighted for his services to sport in 1975.
Ben Barnes is an actor who has starred in films including The Chronicles of Narnia and Dorian Gray. He starred as Stephen Wraysford in Sir Trevor Nunn’s 2010 stage adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’ novel Birdsong.
Julian Barnes is the author of eleven novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2011. His work has been translated into over forty languages.
Antony Beevor is a historian and author of several books, including Stalingrad (winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature) and Berlin – The Downfall 1945 (winner of the Longman-History Today Trustees Award).
Malorie Blackman is an acclaimed children’s author who has written over sixty books and is acknowledged as one of today’s most imaginative and creative writers for young readers. In 2008 she was appointed an OBE for her contribution to children’s literature and is the Children’s Laureate 2013–15.
Sir Quentin Blake is a an artist, illustrator and children’s writer. As well as creating his own picture books, he has collaborated with writers such as Roald Dahl, Michael Rosen, John Yeoman, Russell Hoban and Michael Morpurgo. He has won many prizes, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration, the Eleanor Farjeon Award and the Kate Greenaway Medal, and in 1999 he was appointed the first Children’s Laureate. In 2013 Blake was knighted for his services to illustration.
John Boyne is the author of eight novels for adults and four for younger readers, including the international bestseller The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which was made into a Miramax feature film.
Theresa Breslin is the author of over thirty books for children and young adults, and her work has been adapted for radio, stage and television. Divided City was shortlisted for ten book awards and won two, and was chosen for the One Book cross-border reading project in Ireland set up by the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation. She was awarded the Carnegie Medal for her book Whispers in the Graveyard.
Raymond Briggs is a children’s author and illustrator. Several of his books have been made into highly acclaimed animated films, including The Snowman and When the Wind Blows. Briggs has twice been awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal – for The Mother Goose Treasury and Father Christmas.
Sarah Brown is President of the charity PiggyBankKids and Patron of a number of charities, including Wellbeing of Women, Women’s Aid and Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres. She is married to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and in 2011 published Behind the Black Door, a memoir about her time in Downing Street.
Shami Chakrabarti is Director of the human rights organization Liberty. She is Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a Master of the Bench of Middle Temple. Her first book, On Liberty, is published this year.
Emma Chichester Clark is a children’s book illustrator and author, best known for her picture book series Blue Kangaroo. Clark studied illustration under Quentin Blake and in 1988 won the Mother Goose Award for best newcomer.
Eoin Colfer is an author of books for children and young adults. He began writing plays at an early age and, as an adult, continued to write. He is best known for his popular series of children’s books, Artemis Fowl.
Jilly Cooper is a journalist, author and media superstar. The author of many number one bestselling books, she was appointed an OBE for services to literature in 2004.
Susan Cooper is a world-renowned author of children’s books. Her classic The Dark Is Rising sequence has won the Newbery Medal and was twice shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Her Boggart titles have won the Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book Award. As well as writing novels, Susan Cooper has written for the theatre and for television.
Richard Curtis is an award-winning film director and script writer, and the creator of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, Notting Hill and Mr Bean. Along with Rowan Atkinson and Ben Elton, he co-wrote the much-loved sitcom Blackadder.
Laura Dockrill is an author, performance poet, illustrator and short story writer. She was named one of the top ten literary talents by The Times, and one of the top twenty ‘hot faces to watch’ by ELLE magazine. Her first book for children, Darcy Burdock, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize.
Ben Elton is an award-winning playwright, librettist, director, comedian and the author of fourteen internationally bestselling novels. His television writing credits include The Young Ones, Blackadder and The Thin Blue Line.
Lissa Evans became a radio and television producer – her credits include Room 101, Father Ted and The Kumars at Number 42 – following a brief career in medicine. She has written books for both adults and children, including Small Change for Stuart, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Children’s Book Award.
Maggie Fergusson is Director of the Royal Society of Literature and Literary Editor of The Economist’s bi-monthly magazine, Intelligent Life. She is the award-winning author of biographies of George Mackay Brown and Michael Morpurgo. Her elder daughter, Flora, is studying for her GCSEs at Sacred Heart High School in Hammersmith.
Frank Field is a Labour Party politician who has been the MP for Birkenhead since 1979. He served as the Minister of Welfare Reform (1997–8). He is author of many books on social policy, including Saints and Heroes: Inspiring Politics (2010).
Anne Fine is the author of over fifty highly acclaimed books for children. She has won numerous awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, and both the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year and the Carnegie Medal twice over. Anne was appointed Children’s Laureate (2001–3), and in 2003 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an OBE.
Klaus Flugge is a children’s publisher. In 1976 he set up his own publishing company, Andersen Press, and has since published over 2,000 books for children. In 1999, Flugge received the Eleanor Farjeon Award for his outstanding contribution to children’s books, and in 2010 became only the second publisher to be awarded honorary membership of the Youth Libraries Group.
Michael Foreman is an acclaimed children’s author and illustrator. Amongst Michael’s most personal creations is his award-winning trilogy of books, War Boy, War Game and After the War Was Over. They draw on Michael’s own experience of the Second World War and its aftermath, and his family’s experience of the First World War.
Mariella Frostrup is a journalist, broadcaster and campaigner. She presents Open Book on BBC Radio 4 and has a regular column in the Observer. Frostrup is a respected arts critic and BAFTA member who has sat on the judging panel of a number of the UK’s top arts prizes, including the Man Booker Prize, the Evening Standard Film Awards, the Turner Prize, the Stirling Prize and the Costa Book of the Year.
Frank Gardner is the BBC’s Security Correspondent, reporting for television and radio on issues of domestic and international security, notably on Al-Qaeda-related terrorism. He has written for The Economist, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and Time Out, and has been published in The Best of Sunday Times Travel Writing. In 2005 he was appointed an OBE for services to journalism.
Jamila Gavin has written numerous critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories. Her book Coram Boy won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award in 2000, and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal before being adapted for the stage.
Morris Gleitzman is a bestselling children’s author. His books explore serious and sometimes confronting subjects in humorous and unexpected ways. His titles include Two Weeks with the Queen, Grace, Doubting Thomas, Bumface, Give Peas a Chance, Pizza Cake, Too Small to Fail, Once, Then, Now and After. His books are published in more than twenty countries.
Dame Evelyn Glennie is an award-winning percussionist and composer, and is considere
d the first person in musical history to successfully create a full-time career as a solo percussionist. Glennie was appointed an OBE for services to music in 1993 and was promoted to Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2007.
Howard Goodall is an award-winning composer of choral music, stage musicals, film and TV scores, and a distinguished broadcaster. He was appointed a CBE in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to music education.
Miranda Hart is a comedy writer, comedian and actress. Hart writes and stars in the hit BBC comedy Miranda and stars as Camilla ‘Chummy’ Cholomondely-Browne in the BBC drama Call the Midwife. Hart’s first book, Is It Just Me?, was published in 2013.
Anne Harvey is an actress, broadcaster and a poetry and literary anthologist. She has edited numerous poetry anthologies and in her work as an actress has portrayed many literary heroes, including the author Eleanor Farjeon whose life, along with that of the poet Edward Thomas, she has researched and written about extensively.
Charlie Higson is an author and TV writer and producer. Higson has written a number of novels for adults and children, including the bestselling Young Bond and The Enemy series, and his television credits include the hit comedy series The Fast Show.
Anthony Horowitz is an award-winning writer and screenwriter. He is the author of the internationally successful Alex Rider series, which was adapted into a film for which he wrote the screenplay. Horowitz’s television credits include Midsomer Murders and Foyle’s War. In 2014 he was awarded an OBE for services to literature.
Carol Hughes was married to the late poet and children’s author Ted Hughes (Poet Laureate 1984–98) from 1970 until his death in 1998. In 2006 she opened the Hughes Poetry Trail at Stover Country Park in Devon.
Shirley Hughes is a children’s author and illustrator. As well as illustrating the work of prominent children’s authors, notably Dorothy Edwards’s My Naughty Little Sister series, she has written and illustrated over fifty books, including Dogger and the Alfie series. Hughes has won the Eleanor Farjeon Award, and the Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration twice. In 1999 she received an OBE for services to children’s literature.