TV Watch: I Was There

Of all the programmes I’ve watched so far in the BBC’s First World War season, last week’s I Was There is by far the best. It consists of interviews conducted in the 1960s for the BBC’s famous series The Great War. Everyone interviewed, British or Austrian, soldier or civilian, still had fresh memories of the war and the restrained way in which they report their experiences is an echo from another age. I found it very moving.

I’m indebted to George Simmers’s blog for the information that the extended interviews are available online here. Very well worth watching, I promise. When I watched the programme, I didn’t realise that one interviewee was the same Charles Carrington who wrote A Subaltern’s War, one of the best war memoirs I’ve read.



Edit: I've just found out that many (all, even?) episodes of the 1964 series are available on YouTube. Episode one here. The accents don’t sound so very different from wartime ones.