First world war

The Final Whistle: the Great War in 15 players – a London rugby club at war 1914-1918

A missing war memorial first inspired a quest to discover club members who fell in the Great War. 85 names have now been identified. Some remarkable stories paint a miniature portrait of the whole war – every service, arm, theatre ...
Tracing battalions or regiments of the British Army during the Great War

This podcast gives you an introduction to the various records at The National Archives that can be used to trace the experiences of individual battalions or regiments during The Great War. These include unit war diaries, trench maps, Prisoner of ...
Adlestrop: railways, poetry and the myths of 1914

Adlestrop by Edward Thomas is one of the nation’s favourite poems. Written in the heat of battle by an officer who was doomed not to survive the war, Adlestrop idealises the stillness of a railway station in an English country ...
Marjorie’s War: four families and the Great War

This podcast is based on the recently published book which tells the story of the author’s grandmother and nine young men from the four families. They were all served as junior officers and between them fought in all the major ...
Women Making Munitions

The film goes straight in to show women using heavy engineering machinery such as belt driven lathes. We see women on the production line assembling shells, which is clearly a complex and quite skilled process. The worker takes great care ...
National Service – Women’s Land Army

This short clip consists of a romantic scene in which a noble woman runs a horse drawn plough across the field. It is taken from a recruiting film for more women to help in the war effort. Context When the ...
Women’s Army in France

This clip comes from a compilation film of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in France, 1917-1918. In this segment we see women with their sleeves rolled up maintaining or repairing an engine. They may be a female ambulance crew (possibly ...
Women Transport Workers

The film starts with a tram being driven and conducted by women. The journey continues as the women driver prepares the tram and we then see the women conductor taking tickets on the top deck. Context When the Great War ...
‘With the North and South Irish At The Front’ Official pictures of the British army in France-Fourth series

The opening titles tell us we are looking at the Ulster Division, probably from 1915-17. We then see huge numbers of soldiers from that division all posing, smiling and waving for the camera. The titles then show us the Royal ...
Dublin After The Easter Rising

The film opens with titles locating scenes of the fighting in Dublin at Easter 1916. Several different shots follow that focus on the huge amount of damage caused in the city. We are shown Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), the ...
Armistice Day Ceremonies

The film starts with titles explaining the Armistice Day ceremony. It then goes on to show the march past the Cenotaph in Whitehall. Context The Great War officially ended in July 1919 when Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. Soon ...
Inspecting Captured German Defences

In this short sequence we see Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig inspecting the wrecked remains of the Hindenburg Line, Germany’s strongest line of defences. With him is Colonel Robert S. Bacon, a US officer, and French and British officers as ...
For the Empire – Part 2

This clip takes us first through a sequence of ruined cities in Belgium and France and shows scenes of complete devastation. This is contrasted with London’s safety from such attacks and this then links to a shot of merchant ships, ...
Total war

This talk focuses on the concept of total war, what it means, and what it has meant over the past 200 years, with particular reference to the First and Second World Wars, the Boer War, the American Civil War and ...
The British Red Cross and its archives

The British Red Cross has long recognised the importance of its history and archive collection, maintaining an archive since the late 1960s. The talk outlines the history of the British Red Cross and show how this has left a record ...