World War One: The Cultural Front

A BBC Radio 4 History Series

By: Francine Stock

Narrated by: Francine Stock, Various

Francine Stock explores how the Great War shaped culture and society between 1914 and 1918

The First World War was the great military and political event of its time. But it was also an imaginative event: one that profoundly altered the ways in which men and women thought about the world, and about culture and its expressions. In this compelling five-series programme, journalist and presenter Francine Stock scrutinises the diverse responses of artists and entertainers to the bitter realities of war, and reveals how their new perspectives entered the public consciousness.

Each series focuses on a specific year of the conflict, beginning with 1914, as the written word was mobilised; the music industry embraced both patriotism and escapism; and painters including Kandinsky created some of their most powerful work. Stock shows how the aftershocks of war sparked the rise of modernism and the avant-garde in 1915, and looks at how trauma was addressed in the works of Freud and the compositions of Debussy. Moving on to the following year, she demonstrates how the carnage at Verdun and the Somme inspired Dadaism, galvanised creators from Picasso to Apollinaire—and made the tank into an unlikely icon on the home front.

Looking at 1917, Stock tells the story of the Harlem Hellfighters and how jazz conquered France; finds out about the popular cross-dressing theatre troupes who were taking the Front Line by storm; and listens as the first meeting between poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen is celebrated in a landmark violin performance using instruments made in memory of the duo. She concludes by examining the war's final deadly year, as US troops arrive on the Western Front, Charlie Chaplin makes a film about a private with dreams of becoming a war hero; the Austro-Hungarian Empire falls; and Elgar, Stanley Spencer and Rebecca West anticipate the end of the hostilities and the soldiers' return.

Production credits

Presented by Francine Stock

Produced by Tom Alban, Mark Burman, Caitlin Smith, Mark Rickards, Clare Walker, Georgia Catt, Sarah Shebbeare, Elizabeth Duffy.

Production Coordinator: Anne Smith

Editors: John Goudie, Philip Sellars

Readers: Clive Hayward, Heather Craney, Sean Baker, Susan Jameson, Sam Rix, Sargon Yelda, Brian Protheroe, Nicola Ferguson, Nick Underwood, Lucy Doyle, Sean Murray, Ryan Whittle, Liam Fernandez, Cameron Percival and other members of the Radio Drama Company

Singer: Eloise Irving

Pianist: Simon Townley

First broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 on the following dates:

Series 1

Words for Battle: 8 March 2014

Arf a Mo, Kaiser: Popular Culture on All Fronts: 15 March 2014.

Kandinsky, Khaki and Kisses: 22 March 2014

Series 2

Glimpses of a Modern World: 18 April 2015

A Cubist War: 25 April 2015

War on the Mind: 2 May 2015

Series 3

Bleeding France: 9 April 2016

The Tank and the Home Fires: 16 April 2016

Dada and Defiance: 23 April 2016

Series 4

The Jazz Kings Go to War: 12 August 2017

Reality and Reconstruction: 19 August 2017

An Intimate War: 26 August 2017

Series 5

1918: Chaplin Goes to War: 8 September 2018

1918: Vienna and the Fall of an Empire: 15 September 2018

The Return of the Soldier: 22 September 2018

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