GREAT WAR LECTURE SERIES

The secrets of The Somme at La Boisselle will be the debut talk for Eastbourne's Great War lecture series taking place in one of the Naploleonic casemates at the Redoubt Fortress and Military Museum.

For more information on these talks and their dates, please scroll down this newsletter. 

JEREMY BANNING - RICHARD VAN EMDEN - ANDY ROBERTSHAW

Helena Tym, mother of Rfn Cyrus Thatcher (KIA Afghanistan 2009) shares her story with us in "Chin Up, Head Down". Cyrus's story first came to light when The Independent published his letters in 2009. Helena was a guest on the BBC Radio2 Jeremy Vine Show last month and you can read more in July's Soldier Magazine.

Reveille Press is a dedicated WW1 imprint from Tommies Guides in partnership with The Western Front Association. You can buy all these titles from our website here. For full details on how you can get published via Reveille Press please visit www.reveillepress.com

Saturday 18th August 2012

Jeremy Banning is a former investment banker who now works as a military historian, researcher and battlefield guide lecturing on the Great War.

Since 2002 he has worked with Peter Barton on a series of books including titles on ‘The Somme’, ‘Passchendaele’ and ‘Arras’ produced in association with the Imperial War Museum. He has been a researcher on four of Richard van Emden’s books. He is next due on our screens in the autumn on the BBC’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ series where he accompanied comedian Hugh Dennis around the battlefields following in his grandfather’s
footsteps.

THE TALK - LA BOISSELLE STUDY GROUP
In January 2011 a team of military historians and archaeologists began a long-term study of a unique piece of First World War battleground. Bordering the village of La Boisselle this area is at the heart of the Somme battlefield. Work is revealing a host of features including evidence of French, British and German occupation spanning the evolution of trench warfare. The ground here was also extensively undermined and the team has just begun to explore, survey and record one of most important and labyrinthine tunnel systems on the Western Front.

Jeremy’s talk will look at both the wartime history of the site from the 1914 French/German fighting through to the British takeover and build up to the Battle of the Somme and showcase the ongoing work of the project, both above and below ground. Utilising previously unseen images and film from inside the British tunnel system he will fully illustrate the incredible fortitude of the tunnellers and the legacy left on the village today.

Saturday 15th September

Richard van Emden will be the guest speaker for the lecture series.

Richard has been interested in the Great War since his teens and has visited the battlefields every year since 1985. After graduating
he trained as a journalist; he has since been researcher, historical consultant, producer and director of television programmes. He co-directed BBC4’s ‘Shooting the War’, and earlier this year appeared on Channel Four’s ‘War Horse: the Real Story’.

Richard has interviewed 270 veterans of the First World War, and edited the memoirs of several, the best known being Harry Patch, the last veteran of the trenches and a great personal friend. Among his other books are bestsellers ‘Britain’s Boy Soldiers’, and ‘Tommy’s Ark, Soldiers and their Animals in the Great War’. His latest book, ‘The Quick and the Dead’ was published last November.

THE TALK - THE QUICK AND THE DEAD
In no conflict, before or since, have so many British soldiers marched off to war, never to be seen again. They lay where they fell until buried in a military cemetery; as many as half in graves known only unto God. Many disappeared completely, leaving only names on great monuments dedicated to the missing. They left distraught families for whom closure took not years but decades, and for some, a lifetime.

This is the story of those who are commonly forgotten when the fallen are remembered. Through the stories, drawn from dozens of interviews, plus private diaries and unpublished letters written by the soldiers to their families back home, Richard tells the story of not just what became of our grandfathers, but what became of relatives at home, and how their experiences influenced the generations they left behind.

Saturday 13th October

Andy Robertshaw is Curator/Manager of The Royal Logistic Corps Museum in Deepcut. He was previously Head of Education at the National Army Museum in London. During his career Andy has lectured to international audiences on many aspects of British military history. An Honorary lecturer at University College London and Honorary research fellow at the Centre for First World War studies at Birmingham University he is also a consultant to the Belgian Association for World War Archaeology.

Andy’s work has been widely published. Working with David  Kenyon the volume, ‘Digging the Trenches: The Archaeology of the Western  Front’ published in 2008 is now in its a third edition. His newest publication is ‘The Platoon’ an account of the experience of Private Joseph Johns Steward who served with the London Regiment

Over the past 12 years he has made regular television appearances including the BBC series ‘Two Men in a Trench’, Channel 4’s ‘Time Team’ and ‘Blood and Bullets’ for The History Channel. Best known for the series ‘Finding the Fallen’ and ‘The Trench Detectives’, he is currently working with the BBC as consultant on a series about logistics in War and with BBC2 on a programme about mines on the Western Front in the Great War.

THE TALK - THE MAKING OF WAR HORSE - THE MOVIE
Andy was the military consultant for the film and worked on the script and research before spending most of the autumn of 2010 on various locations where he advised the production team, including Stephen Spielberg. He is able to provide an inside view of the production from the early script to the last day of filming and has a unique collection of photographs taken during the production.

See the information on the side panel of this email newsletter.

Alternatively please visit www.eastbournemuseums.co.uk, email redoubtmuseum@eastbourne.gov.uk or tel. 01323 410300

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