Barbed Wire for Kisses

Village at War 1914-1918

Duration 1 hr 5 mins
Published 8 Oct 2020
Updated 15 Apr 2021
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Digitial audiobook for streaming and mobile download

In this spell-binding performance the narratives of families in one small community tell the bigger story of the First World War. Lives and deaths on several fronts are played out without leaving the boundaries of an English parish. The trials, tragedies and triumphs at home open a human window onto the trauma that shaped the twentieth century. Using material from the Lincolnshire County Archives and songs composed by men who lived through the war (George Butterworth, Ivor Gurney, Gerald Finzi) alongside traditional and original material, musicians and storytellers invoke an English rural world in crisis, a world that is both remote and familiar.