ON October 29, 1918, 22-year-old Gunner Ned Parfett, who had been awarded the Military Medal (MM) and mentioned in dispatches, was collecting clothes before going home on leave. A stray shell hit the quartermaster’s stores and he was killed instantly. His face was famous worldwide as the newsboy carrying the placard about the sinking of RMS Titanic, during which an estimated 1,517 people were lost. However, what was headlined a ‘GREAT LOSS OF LIFE’ in 1912 would pale into relative insignificance in view of what was to come.
On July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, there were 57,470 British casualties. Of these, 19,240 were killed, most during the opening assault. These devastating numbers indicate the scale of death and injury caused by the First World War. All such statistics represent individuals who, in the words of Canadian medical officer John McCrae, ‘short days ago… felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved’. As We Were sets out to tell their stories.
The inspiration for As We Were came from Robert Cottrell, editor of the online journal The Browser, who, in the summer of 2014, asked David Hargreaves to produce a weekly account of what had happened 100 years before, to mark the centenary of the First World War. I became the researcher and David wrote the essays, which were published initially on The Browser’s site and then at www.centuryjournal.com.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 4, 2021-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 4, 2021-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
