Prize Lectureship

Prize Lecturer 2003 - Professor Richard Holmes, CBE

War of Words: The British Army and the Western Front 1914-18

In May 2003, Professor Richard Holmes, CBE, of the Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University, delivered the 2003 Prize Lectures in Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

The bloody struggle on the Western Front has polarised historians. Some have written of 'Lions led by Donkeys', while others see the British army's achievement as a 'Forgotten Victory'. Professor Holmes argued that we still find it hard to approach the war as history rather than as literatuare. In his lecture he suggested that letters and diaries of participants, written at the time, tend to give a different view of the war from that reflected in much of its poetry and literature. He also argued that the debate about generalship has tended to obscure the real achievements of the men who fought and endured. We should, he suggested, have fewer polemics about Haig - for or against - and look harder at the everyday lives of the officers and men who won the war.

The text of the lecture is available for download in pdf format.[Download file]

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