In Flanders Field

I  read this review at the weekend and immediately ordered the CD:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/26/in-flanders-fields-review-first-world-war-michael-morpurgo

The CD features Coope, Boyes and Simpson, ie is Morpugo-less, but nonetheless it is brilliant.  It arrived just over an hour ago and I'm currently listening to it.

I know some of the music, especially the songs that feature in Oh What A Lovely War, but these performances are stripped back and much rougher.  Brilliant!

 

MCMXIV

I wanted to post something today because of the date, and after much deliberation there was only choice:

MCMXIV
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day--

And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

Philip Larkin

Inevitably Alan Bennett quotes from it in The History Boys.