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The Great War: The People's Story
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Through original diaries, letters, and memoirs, this unforgettable documentary tells how the lives of regular British men and women were transformed by the Great War.
Highest-rated episodes all ranked
- 01Episode 1As war breaks out, the journey of Reg Evans, a cockney lad and one of the first to volunteer to fight, is told told through moving letters to his anxious mother at home. The letters of Alan Lloyd, an upper-crust young man from Birmingham who joined the army in the same month he was married, to his new wife from the battlefields of Ypres reveal the shock of a generation of young men coming to terms with a war more terrible than anyone had foreseen. Dorothy Lawrence was determined to find a part she could play in the war… and who set off on her own to the trenches, undercover as a war correspondent. James Butlin, a young Oxford University student, whose letters indicate initial positivity on joining the conflict disintegrating into despair as the reality of trench warfare takes its toll.
- 02Episode 2The real-life stories of Reg Evans, shot in the face in the trenches, as he undergoes pioneering plastic surgery – and of Alan Lloyd, who has swapped life with his new wife and baby son for the battlefields of Ypres and the Somme. But it also explores war on the Home Front – through the diaries of fashionable celebrity cook and restaurateur Hallie Miles and suffragette Kate Parry Frye, as they see the old Edwardian world crumble around them, opening up ever more opportunities for women, as ever more men – including their own loved ones – and sent to fight and die at the Front.
- 03Episode 3The focus shifts to a changing Britain, and the lives of those left behind at home. Helen Bentwich, a clever young woman who chafed against the restrictions placed on her sex – and seized the chance to work in the arms factories at Woolwich Arsenal, before becoming appalled by the conditions there and joining a trade union. The funny diary of country vicar Andrew Clark is marked by increasing sadness as more and more men leave his village for war, never to return. The fighting is entering its darkest phase – with all hopes for a quick end dashed – but still life and love goes on… Emily Chitticks, a servant girl, falls in love with Will Martin, a soldier at a local barracks. But soon the call will come for him to go to France too…
Cast
Episodes by season
Season01
- S01E01Season's bestEpisode 1August 10, 2014As war breaks out, the journey of Reg Evans, a cockney lad and one of the first to volunteer to fight, is told told through moving letters t
- S01E02Episode 2August 17, 2014The real-life stories of Reg Evans, shot in the face in the trenches, as he undergoes pioneering plastic surgery – and of Alan Lloyd, who h
- S01E03Episode 3August 24, 2014The focus shifts to a changing Britain, and the lives of those left behind at home. Helen Bentwich, a clever young woman who chafed against
- S01E04Episode 4August 31, 2014In 1917, the war is in its darkest phase. Everyone knows victory can only come at a long, slow, and painful cost. So many lives have been
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