OH! WHAT A LOVELY WAR

Eleanor Dickens, curator at the British Library, reveals how 60 years ago a radical Stage musical changed perceptions of the First World War

On 19 March 1963, the musical Oh! What a Lovely War premiered at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London to great acclaim. Directed by British theatre director Joan Littlewood, the production was a biting satire about the First World War. Making extensive use of songs that were popular during 1914-18, the musical mixed comedic and tragic themes to make its 1960s audience reconsider what they thought they knew about the conflict.

The nightmarish horrors of the war had already been subjected to cultural critique during the conflict itself by soldier-poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. The posttraumatic aftershocks were also depicted in the interwar period by playwrights such as RC Sherriff, who wrote the 1928 play Journey's End based on his own experiences of fighting on the Western Front.

However, men like Owen, Sassoon and Sherriff were members of the officer class and the experiences and sufferings of the ordinary 'Tommy' had largely been glossed over by popular culture. This changed in the 1960s with revisionist histories of the war that heavily criticised the British high command.

For example, Alan Clark's 1961 military history book The Donkeys popularised the phrase "Lions led by donkeys", with Oh! What a Lovely War emerging as part of this new reassessment. Told from the perspective of the common soldier, the musical was noticeably political and angry at the enormous casualties. This struck an emotional chord that chimed with audiences who had survived or were intimately familiar with the experience of both World Wars.