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World War One: The Cultural Front

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Series 3

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

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World War One: The Cultural Front: Series 3

World War One: The Cultural Front: Series 3: Episode 2: The Tank and the Home Fires

Episode 2

Episode 2: The Tank and the Home Fires

The Tank and the Home Fires

BBC Radio 4 - World War One: The Cultural Front, Series 3, The Tank and the Home Fires

1916: Tanks capture the public imagination, but the comforts of home are shattered by war.

1916: Francine Stock discovers how tanks capture the public imagination, wounded soldiers flock to theatres for musicals, and the public crowd to see The Battle of the Somme film.

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.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society in 1916.

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World War One: The Cultural Front

Series 3

Episode 2: The Tank and the Home Fires

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