1915 in Film
The Tramp A Fool There Was The Italian Carmen The Champion Filibus Fatty’s Spooning Days Assunta Spina Regeneration The Cheat Der Golem The Raven The Martyrs of the Alamo Madame Butterfly The Golden Chance Work Sage Brush Tom
Joe Hill
Taking a break from the war for a moment, the excellent Between The Liner Notes podcast has a history of Joe Hill, the songwriter whose work would inform the political side of folk music for the rest of the century, who was executed for a murder he almost certainly did not commit in 1915. Between …
The Great War
The 1964 BBC TV Series The Great War may sometimes feel a bit hokey and outdated in its narrative style, but with the centenary over and done with, it looks like its position is still unchallenged as the definitive documentary of the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 …
Birth of A Nation
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 …
Gallipoli
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 …
The Centuries of Sound Listening List
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 – …
Centuries of Sound on Cambridge 105 Radio — Episode 12 (1904)
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 »
Kafka’s The Trial
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 …
Blueprint for Armageddon
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, …
BBC Voices of The First World War
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 …