Siegfried Sassoon was one of the most famous of the British World War I poets but unlike Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke or Edward Thomas, Sassoon survived the war he had despised while serving brilliantly. Terence Davies’ final film traces both the war service and the long life looking for meaning which followed, with Jack Lowden … Continue reading “Benediction: Siegfried Sassoon Biopic”
The First World War was so devastating, countries were at a loss to know how to commemorate their dead. A hundred years ago, two years after the Armistice, Britain’s King George V inaugurated the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Cathedral, to honour all the anonymous fallen. Although the war had mobilised vast numbers … Continue reading “The Unknown Warrior 100 Years On”
In 1920, almost 150 years after the United States declared that “all men are created equal,” American women got the right to vote… 27 years after women in New Zealand did. American suffragists worked for almost 80 years to obtain that right. And there’s still work to do today. As is often the case in … Continue reading “Centennial of Suffrage”
The new World War I drama from director Sam Mendes, 1917, unfolds in real-time, tracking a pair of British soldiers as they cross the Western Front on a desperate rescue mission. Soldiers Blake and Schofield must travel nine miles across the treacherous war zone to deliver orders to stop a regiment attacking enemy lines within … Continue reading “1917”
We always love to read students’ work. Here are some poems pupils wrote as their final task in a sequence from Shine Bright LLCER: File 5 War Will Not Tear Us Apart. In this sequence for Première LLCER, in the theme Rencontres Axe 1 L’amour et l’amitié, students considered how World War I intensified human … Continue reading “Your Students Have Talent: War Will Not Tear Us Apart”
To mark the centenary of the end of the First World War, Peter Jackson has restored old black-and-white archive footage of British servicemen’s life in the trenches. “They Shall Not Grow Old” takes its title from a 1914 poem and this resource fits perfectly into Shine Bright 1re Advanced File 2: “War will Not Tear … Continue reading “WWI: They Shall Not Grow Old”
A new documentary film by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson brings the soldiers in the First World War to life to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice. The First World War was the first major conflict after the invention of film cameras. To mark the centenary of the end of the War on … Continue reading “They Shall Not Grow Old”
The trailer for the biopic Tolkien is perfect to add to Shine Bright 1re Advanced File 2 “War will not tear us apart” or File 1 “Biopics in Hollywood”. It draws parallels between Tolkien’s childhood friendships and love, his experience of World War I and his later heroic fantasy novels The Hobbit and Lord of … Continue reading “Tolkien, War and Fellowship”
JRR Tolkien’s stories of Middle Earth, hobbits, wizards and dragons have captured the imagination of generations. A new film looks at his experiences of friendship, love and war as a young man, and how they may have influenced the man and work. Tolkien the film opens with a young officer, Tolkien, ill with a fever, … Continue reading “Tolkien the Storyteller”
Why did the First World War inspire so many participants to write poetry? And what effect does the work of poets like Wilfred Owen, Vera Brittain, Siegfried Sassoon or Rupert Brooke have on our vision of that war today? Author Simon Davies will address these questions in a public talk at the British Council Paris … Continue reading “Talk in English: World War I Poets”
