The History Boys

The History Boys has just topped a poll for the most popular British play - beating even The Importance of Being Earnest, Death of a Salesman and all of Shakespeare.

The characters discuss the First World War as the students prepare for the Oxbridge Exam and Irwin, ever the contrarian, suggests a different view of the war:

Let's go back to 1914 and I'll put you a different case.

Try this for size.

Germany does not want war and if there is an arms race it is Britain who is leading it. Though there's no reason why we should want war. Nothing in it for us.  Better stand back and let Germany and Russia fight it out while we take the imperial pickings.

These are facts.

Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was our fault because so many of our people died. a photograph on every mantelpiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realise that so far as the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.

The number of books appearing in print about the First World War all need an angle to sell themselves.  In my view commemoration should be in and celebration should be out.