Somme

A hidden side of the Somme

11 December 2021 9:00 am

Noticing via this Low Life column that I had trench fever, the Western Front Association treated me to a year’s…

A very annoying guide to the Somme battlefields

24 July 2021 9:00 am

We arranged to meet the second, more expensive, guide of our Somme battlefield visit at the Thiepval Memorial visitor centre…

Walking the Somme

17 July 2021 9:00 am

Where the 36th (Ulster) Division attacked at 7.30 a.m. on the first morning of the Battle of the Somme in…

Jam and Opium on the Somme

25 July 2020 9:00 am

Phone calls aside, the only human contact I had on my ten-day Somme battlefield tour was with the lady who…

The beauty of military cemeteries

18 July 2020 9:00 am

They are starting to cut the corn. But apart from combine harvesters and tractors, the roads up here on the…

My Great War obsession

11 July 2020 9:00 am

Bernafay Wood B&B, Somme, France I came up on the TGV yesterday from the Midi to northern France and it…

British troops go over the top on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme

The British army’s greatest catastrophe — and its most valuable lesson

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Peter Parker spends 24 hours on the bloodsoaked battlefield of the Somme, scene of the British army’s greatest catastrophe

The Dickin Medal is a morally dubious piece of nonsense

3 May 2014 9:00 am

Apparently, mice think that women are useless. I don’t mean that they think women mice are useless — they’re keen…

Brave Tommies and dim earls — Oh What a Lovely War is hoity-toity reductionism

22 February 2014 9:00 am

Here it is. Fifty years late. Oh What a Lovely War was originally staged at Stratford East in 1964. It…