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Poetry's Passing Bells

Poet and presenter of Poetry Extra, Daljit Nagra, leads Radio 4 Extra’s memorial to the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War – on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month in 1918. Daljit introduces programmes from the Â鶹ԼÅÄ radio archive that traces the impact the First World War had upon poets, both soldiers, and those left behind.

Beginning each edition will be the poetry, and letters, of Wilfred Owen, who died in the weeks before the end of the Great War, in November 1918, aged only 25.

In Anthem for Doomed Youth (Radio 3, 1993), Kenneth Branagh reads some of the most profoundly moving artistic responses to the terrible impact of war ever written.

A Record of War (1981)
The 1914-18 war has been recalled mainly in the writings and reminiscences of the men who fought in France. But women too shared the suffering, the heartbreak and the loss. In 1981, this programme attempted to put the record straight, with readings from the then newly published Scars Upon My Heart, an anthology of women's poetry and verse of the First World War, and from Vera Brittain's published war diary, Chronicle of Youth, also published in 1981.

Presenter: Daljit Nagra
Producer: Peter McHugh