"Jim, you have not named "unread" histotians."
"Unread" by Keith - sorry, probably should have made that clearer.
" Do you really think a bunch of historians got to gether to rewrite the past"
No - of course I don't - in the interim period the world moved on from the old excuses as to why so many millions of young men perished in defence of Empire and the world began to question (a) Whether the Empire was worth such a sacrifice and (b) whether a war based on throwing young man at one another until somebody gave up was a correct way to treat human beings.
The Empire died a few decades after WW1 ended and a war of attrition in the way WW1 was fought is no longer a consideration.
Defence of both of these is not a matter of historical fact, it is one of opinion.
We've always known how the war was fought - in the class-divided past it was accepted as the way things were - in retrospect it was as barbaric as it was burning Catholics in Henry VIII's time.
Defending either as "of it's time" is to defend barbarism.
The pomp of the last two years is a political defence of the indefensable (and a chance to profiteer from ceramic poppies, of course).
Jim Carroll