The Road of Hope and Sorrow: by bike along the Western Front of the Great War
The story of my 1500 kilometre bike ride along the Western Front of World War 1, an amazing 3-week journey through landscape and history
Western Front Sketches: 3 – The Canadian National Memorial at Vimy Ridge
A stiff climb to the high ground Climbing the long, steep hill from the village of Givenchy-en-Gohelle to reach the Canadian National Memorial at Vimy Ridge on a heavily laden bike reinforced what it meant to gain the high ground. In war, taking and holding hills and...
Western Front sketches: 2 – The Christmas Truce sculpture, Messines
In the main square of the small town of Messines, on the high ground of a ridge that saw the prelude to the infamous Battle of Passchendaele, stands a sculpture of two officers, one British and one German, with a football. This is Andy Edwards’ Christmas Truce memorial, a poignant reminder of a moment in December 1914 when the humanity of ordinary men on both sides of the conflict was spontaneously shared, only to be suppressed in the bloody campaigns reasserted in the days that followed.
Western Front sketches: 1 – The Grieving Parents by Käthe Kollwitz
An account of the incredibly tragic story behind ‘The Grieving Parents’, the brilliant German artist Käthe Kollwitz’s memorial to her son who was killed in 1914, and my experiences of drawing of this deeply moving sculpture
Exploring Great War History by Bike: The Lost Legacy for Peace of Jean Jaurès
On the wall of a modest café in Montmartre, a plaque marks what could lay claim to being among the most consequential events of the early 20th Century. It states, simply: ‘Here, on 31st July 1914, Jean Jaurès was assassinated’. By firing his shots through the window...
