Armchair Travel![]() |
| Professor David Reynolds in Belfast Photo: BBC/ClearStory/Hugh Campbell |
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Burial party in Passchendale New British Cemetery: BBC2 N Ireland, Long Shadow, Wed., Oct. 1, 8.00pm.
Photo: ©Commonwealth War Graves Commission |
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| Professor David Reynolds at the Thiepval memorial, Somme Photo: BBC/ClearStory/Hugh Campbell |
A new three-part series begins September 24, Long Shadow, BBC2 N Ireland, 8.00pm. Historian and writer David Reynolds looks at at the legacy of the First World War and the rippling effects that continue through the last century and on to this one.
He begins, in this first part: Remembering and Understanding by contrasting British and German feelings and perceptions of what it might hold for each nation at the time - the British offered it as 'the war to end all wars'. However, the outbreak of the Second World War altered that perception - even then, and it seemed as though that awful and disastrous conflict was hollow, and simply paved the way for more wars.
In the second part of Long Shadow: Ballots and Bullets,Wednesday, October 1, BBC2 N Ireland, 8.00pm. Historian David Reynolds looks at how the First World War lead to an age of what he calls:"turbulent mass democracy." Monarchies were toppled and revolution spawned. Much of Europe in the 1920s and 30s polarized into right and left camps engendering much fear and disquiet. Leaders emerged with competing visions of people power. Britain came out feeling victorious and somewhat detached - the Labour Party and socialism assimilated into the political mainstream, the aristocracy reassessed their position and the monarchy had a make-over as the symbol of the country.
In the third and final part, Long Shadow, Us and Them, Wednesday, October 8, BBC2 N Ireland, 8.00pm., David Reynolds sums up the legacy of the First World War by examining the proliferation of nationalism all over Europe, that national identity takes on a stronger notion differentiating `us versus them'. He visits Belfast in Northern Ireland, Sudetenland in the Czech Republic and the Palace of Versailles in France to explore the drastically changed map of Europe in 1919, and looks at how the new states patched together after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire undermined Europe for much of the 20th century.
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| David Reynolds at Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar Photo: BBC/ClearStory/Hugh Campbell |
