HISTORY
4 December 2006
Monday 4 December 2006 20:00-20:30 (Radio 4 FM)
Michael Portillo presents a series revisiting the great moments of history to discover that they often conceal other events of equal but forgotten importance.
Close to 100 years after the conflict began, the popular memory of the First World War is of mud, blood and futility. We remember the incompetent Generals of Oh! What a Lovely War, the doomed youth of the War Poets, fields of poppies, the stalemate of trench warfare.
But there are less familiar memories of the war, accounts of the liberation of occupied towns, the pride of ordinary soldiers, of military success. Michael Portillo tells the story of battles fought in the last 100 days of the war and asks how British forces progressed from the slaughter of the Somme to the forgotten victories of 1918.
