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Private Harry Patch, a new BBC documentary
Harry Patch, Britain's last survivor of the First World War trenches, is to feature in a new BBC documentary charting a year in his life.
The programme is presented by the historian Richard van Emden who has become close friends with Harry, through writing his biography, The Last Fighting Tommy.
The documentary, Private Harry Patch, will be screened on 12 November at 7.30pm on BBC One in the West of England and repeated on 24 November at 7.30pm on BBC Four.
Richard van Emden says: "He has a certain grace about him. He has a certain quality which you don't find in a lot of people in this modern, cynical world."
Now 110 years old, Harry Patch has rarely been busier or more in demand. He's been photographed, painted and sculpted – he's even had poetry written for him by the Poet Laureate.
The poem, The Five Acts Of Harry Patch, tells the story of his life from his early childhood in Somerset through to his experiences during two world wars and his later years in a care home in the city of Wells.
Now, the Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, has composed a new choral work, setting Andrew Motion's poem to music.
It is effectively a collaboration between the Queen's composer and the Queen's poet.
On Remembrance Sunday the piece was premiered with a performance in Portsmouth Cathedral by the London Mozart Players, a chamber choir from Portsmouth Grammar School and the cathedral's choristers.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies says: "Andrew Motion's poem is absolutely brilliant. I really like it and the whole thing, although the subject is so terrible, somehow makes it easier to come to terms with.
"I hope the music will let us think about it and just realise what a terrible waste of a whole generation that war was."
The programme also features a trip to the battlefield in Belgium where so many of Harry's generation were lost.
Harry was a Lewis gunner for the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917.
He returned to the area in September to unveil a memorial stone at the spot where he and his comrades crossed the Steenbeek prior to their successful assault on the village of Langemarck.
The inscription on the stone, a gift from Harry, says it is erected to the memory of fallen comrades and to honour the courage, sacrifice and passing of the Great War generation.
Although the trip was supposed to be relatively low key, word about Harry's arrival in Belgium soon got out to local people and he found himself lauded and photographed wherever he went.
Harry's determined belief is that we should remember the fallen on both sides of the line so he made a point of visiting the German cemetery at Langemarck.
In the graveyard he collected some acorns to plant back in the garden of his care home in Somerset.
Private Harry Patch can be seen as part of the current series of the regional current affairs programme Inside Out West on Wednesday 12 November at 7.30pm on BBC One in the West of England.
It will be repeated nationally on BBC Four on November 24 at 7.30pm.
The programme will also be available on the BBC iPlayer for seven days after both transmissions.
BBC Bristol Press Office
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