1: Words for Battle. Francine Stock begins her exploration of the culture of the Great War in 1914 with the mobilization of the word. For more than 40 years the next war to come had been a staple of fiction. England had been invaded, bombed and conquered before a shot had ever been fired in anger and now the war was upon us. What unfolded in the first weeks in the towns of villages of Belgium turned the war into a cultural struggle for survival and intellectuals and authors were soon seen as crucial to the war effort. From Arnold Bennett to Israel Zangwill, the literary giants of Edwardian England went to war.

Producer Mark Burman.