The 1964 BBC TV Series The Great War may sometimes feel a bit hokey and outdated in its narrative style, but with the centenary over and done with, it looks like its position is still unchallenged as the definitive documentary of the conflict. Beyond anything else, it’s priceless in its collection of original accounts from …
Not only is there no defending The Birth of A Nation in 2019, it’s wildly offensive even for 1915. A film made to glorify the Klu Klux Klan by claiming that they saved the USA from (appalling racist caricatures of) unruly black people, it was picketed by the NAACP on release, but was enough of …
If you’re looking for stupid, pointless wastes of human life in the First World War, you really are spoilt for choice, but, even among such inauspicious company, the Gallipoli campaign manages to stand out as particularly stupid and particularly pointless. To sum up: The Ottoman Empire sort-of-accidentally entered the war on the side of the …
Centuries of Sound is going slightly open source as of today. Here is a google sheet which contains my planned listening for each year. And I’m inviting you to come and add to it. Data is taken from a number of sources including rateyourmusic and acclaimed music Should go artist – title – type – …
Time: 8pm BST, Saturday 20th July 2019 Place: Cambridge 105fm James Errington takes you on another journey back into the forgotten history of recorded sound, this time joined by Liam Higgins, playing cylinders and shellac all from the year 1904. Aside from the usual brass band, banjo and proto-ragtime and barbershop music, you can listen …
Centuries of Sound on Cambridge 105 Radio — Episode 12 (1904) Read More »
I read The Trial and everything else I could find by Kafka while living a couple of tram stops away from his grave in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague in 2004. The New Jewish Cemetery was opened in 1891 as the Old Jewish Cemetery was full – the vast open space in the lower …
If you’re looking for coverage of the First World War in podcast form then the obvious first stopping point is the Blueprint For Armageddon series of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast, and since I’ve listened to the whole thing, twice, I should really write something about it here. But what exactly? Was it good? Well, …
Often it seems that the past is artificially kept as a distant country. Concerns over accessibility, commercial interests and worries about keeping things “relevant” and “relatable” mean that primary sources are relegated to secondary concerns. So it was wonderful to listen to this series on BBC Radio 4 which used archive interviews to explore the …
MP3 direct download | Itunes | Mixcloud | Feedburner (RSS) “Looking back in hindsight, 1915 appears to be a saga of such horrors, of such mismanagement and muddle, that it is easy to see why it coloured the views of succeeding generations and gave rise to prejudices and myths that have been applied to the …
The Centuries of Sound episode for 1915 is now up for Patreon subscribers – get early access and my radio podcast where I discuss the music at https://www.patreon.com/centuriesofsound January 1 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Formidable is sunk off Lyme Regis, by an Imperial German Navy U-boat, with the loss of 547 crew. January …
