One of the poems in Voices from Stone and Bronze inspired by the work of historian Peter Barton has been commended in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Competition. Judge Roger Elkin comments “Peter Barton’s Lessons of History admirably celebrates the photographic and archaeological research into the mass graves of soldiers and tunnel excavations at the Somme by…
Category: Voices from Stone and Bronze
Voices from Stone and Bronze
I’m launching my second poetry collection, Voices from Stone and Bronze today, and I will be reading in Milton Keynes, London and North Wales. You can order your copy from Cinnamon Press. With thanks to Jan Fortune, Vanessa Gebbie, and Jeremy Banning and also all the members of the Thursday advanced poetry group who…
Pigeon Ravine on the Somme
As I have been writing this blog post I came across my hand-written notes from October 2013 when Jeremy Banning first took me and other writers to Pigeon Ravine and I found Louis Doffman amongst the graves. I can’t remember now whether it was Jeremy who pointed out his headstone (as is his habit of…
The Menin Gate Memorial and Robert Victor Davies
The Menin Gate Memorial is where my great uncle Victor’s name is inscribed as one of the 54,389 men who are commemorated here. When I use the words ‘great uncle’ about someone who died nearly a hundred years ago your mind will probably conjure up an image of an elderly gentleman with Edwardian sideburns. Victor…
Charles Sargeant Jagger 17 December 1885 – 1934 – An Unfinished Symphony In Stone
For this second post in my series about war memorials I’ve chosen Charles Sargeant Jagger, the sculptor who was responsible for many of them. Jagger was 28 years old when the war began and had studied at the Royal College of Art. He’d been a gifted student and had been awarded a scholarship to study…
The Thiepval Memorial and Paul Emmanuel’s ‘Lost Men’
On the walls of the First World War Memorial on Thiepval ridge are the names of 72,194 men, most of whom were killed during the Battle of the Somme (1st July -18th November 1916). They have no known grave, either because their remains were never found (they were obliterated by shell-fire) or because by the…