Robert Sackville-West: The Missing of the First World War (1915)

The Armistice in 1918 might have brought an end to the violence. But for many families it did not mean the end of the story. In 1918 the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers alone remained unknown. These were often very young people, drawn from all walks of life, right across Britain.

They were people who had simply vanished into the battlefields.

In this episode Robert Sackville-West takes us back to the desperate days of the First World War a century ago. He shows us how Britons – from Rudyard Kipling to E.M. Forster – confronted the distressing situations they found themselves in, and how the bereaved attempted to come to terms with their loss.

As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.

Robert Sackville-West is a writer and he runs the Sackville family’s interests at Knole, the house in Kent where his family have lived for the past 400 years.

Click here to order Robert’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.

Show notes

Scene One: 2 October 1915, a distressing telegram arrives at Bateman’s, the home of Rudyard Kipling.

Scene Two: 15 September 1915, Sir Oliver Lodge is playing golf at Gullane, on the east coast of Scotland.

Scene Three: November 1915, The novelist E.M. Forster arrives in Egypt as a Red Cross ‘searcher’.

Memento: An identity tag.

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Robert Sackville-West

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Unseen Histories

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