The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #156062   Message #3679806
Posted By: Teribus
25-Nov-14 - 05:09 AM
Thread Name: Oh! What a Lovely War! - BBC Radio 2
Subject: RE: Oh! What a Lovely War! - BBC Radio 2
Lost the plot again Musket?

Look at these four different periods and snapshots:

1918 to around 1928 - The history and the mémoires as written by those who took part - they roughly agree with what historians are saying now.

1928 to 1939 - First "revised" and critical works generally in the form of mémoires of political leaders deflecting blame from themselves (Lloyd George) and people peddling and pandering to a policy of Appeasement (Basil Liddell Hart)

1960 to 1968 - Second "revision" occasioned by 50th anniversary anti-war hysteria, anti-establishment "Kool" and basically a load of twaddle (e.g. crap such as Alan Clark's "The Donkey's" & OWALW)

1994 to Present - Third "revision" occasioned by the deaths and disappearance of those who fought and lived through it along with the approaching 90th and 100th anniversaries - This came down firmly on the side that the second and third "revisions" were populist, literary, mythological based crap driven by alternative agendas of those doing the writing and that the first take on things wasn't too far off the mark (Not surprisingly).