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SERIES 2 |
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Melvyn Bragg follows his long historical exploration of the Routes of English with Voices of the Powerless, in which he explores the lives of the ordinary working men and women of Britain at six critical moments across the last 1,000 years.
 Listen again to the programme
Programme 5: 21 August
The Waggoners at War
The story of British tommies sent 'over the top' to fight the Germans in the trenches of the First World War is one of the most vivid emblems of powerlessness in the face of military discipline and social pressures that required young men to join up and do their duty.
Stone memorial to the Wolds Waggoners at Sledmere, East Yorkshire
As the voices of the powerless become truly audible with the dawn of the recording era we travel to East Yorkshire to tell the little-known story of the Wolds Waggoners, a regiment drawn up by the local landlord, almost feudally, from the men on his estate, and the fallen to whom he raised a strange and beguiling monument adorned with grotesque cartoon images of warfare, unique in Britain.
 
Stone memorial to the Wolds Waggoners at Sledmere, East Yorkshire
Interviewees:
Dr David Neave
History, University of Hull
Professor Hew Strachan
History of War, All Souls College, Oxford
Professor Joanna Bourke
Modern History, Birbeck College, London
Professor Jay Winter
Yale University
Read the original sources used in the programme.
Useful Links:
Sledmere House
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.
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Audio Help
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DON'T MISS |
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Thursday 9.00-9.45am, rpt 9.30-10.00pm. Melvyn Bragg explores the history of ideas.
Listen again online or download the latest programme as an mp3 file.
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SERIES PAGES |
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GO TO - Homepage.
GO TO Prog l - The Industrial Revolution: Man and Manufacture
GO TO Prog 1 - Read Contemporary Sources
GO TO Prog 2 - The Napoleonic Wars: Below Decks and Boney
GO TO Prog 2 - Read Contemporary Sources
GO TO Prog 3 - Transportation: A Journey Beyond the Seas
GO TO Prog 3 - Read Contemporary Sources
GO TO Prog 4 - Highland Clearances: The Crofters' Farewell
GO TO Prog 4 - Read Contemporary Sources
GO TO Prog 5 - The Waggoners at War
GO TO Prog 5 - Read Contemporary Sources
GO TO Prog 6 - Miners in the Depression: Coal and Dole
GO TO Prog 6 - Read Contemporary Sources
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RELATED PROGRAMMES |
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This Sceptred Isle
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USEFUL LINKS |
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www.bbc.co.uk/history
news.bbc.co.uk
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PRESENTER |
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| Melvyn Bragg |
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Melvyn Bragg presents In Our Time for BBC Radio 4, a series where he and his guests discuss the "Big Ideas" of cultural or scientific significance.
He also presented The Routes of English, his millennial series celebrating 1,000 years of the English language.
Melvyn Bragg was born in 1939 in Wigton, Cumbria - where many of his books are set. He won a scholarship to Oxford to read history, and in 1961 he gained a coveted traineeship with the BBC.
He has presented a number of television series including: Read All about It, Two Thousand Years, and Who's Afraid of the Ten Commandments? and createdThe South Bank Show.
Melvyn presented Start the Week between 1988 and 1998. In his 1998 series On Giant's Shoulders he interviewed scientists about their eminent predecessors.
As well as presenting for Radio 4, he is Controller of Arts for London Weekend Television. He's written 17 novels, the latest of which, The Soldier's Return, won the WH Smith Literary Award.
Melvyn Bragg was made a Life Peer in 1998 and he took the title of Baron Bragg of Wigton in the County of Cumbria.
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