1916: Francine Stock continues her series on the cultural responses to the conflict with a focus on the tank. Prefigured in drawings by Leonardo and H.G. Wells' short story 'The Land Iron Clads', the tank appears at the Battle of the Somme on September 15, 1916. Quickly becoming a British icon, it attracts enormous public interest and sparks the production of popular souvenir items like handbags, teapots, toys and cartoons, popular songs and musical shows. The first officially commissioned war artist Muirhead Bone is sent out to the Somme and creates a series of dramatic charcoal drawings to illustrate its mesmerising appearance.

Meanwhile, hugely popular musicals like The Bing Boys are Here, Theodore and Co and Oscar Ashe's Chu Chin Chow provide distractions for maimed soldiers or those returning on leave from the horror of war. At cinemas across the country, twenty million people crowd to see the war first hand and spot their friends and family in The Battle of the Somme. As Mallins and McDowell lug their huge cameras around muddy trenches, you can lip-read men saying hello to their mums and see the naked fear on their faces before going over the parapet.

With huge swathes of children back home losing their fathers, Francine discovers how books such as 'War in Dollyland', tried explain the alien world of war from a child's point of view. And she visits the study in Essex where H. G. Wells wrote one of the best-selling works of wartime fiction, Mr Britling Sees it Through. Many parallels can be drawn between Wells and the protagonist, not least the question, which Britling often poses, of whether an intellectual can really capture the realities of war from the comfort of his armchair.

Producer Clare Walker. Show less