The Old Front Line

In our third and final Bonus Episode that brings Season 8 to a close, we have a live recording from the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, recorded while out leading a battlefield tour a few weeks ago. We…

In this second Bonus Episode to end Season 8 of the podcast we look at the subject of Great War veterans and in particular Malcolm Vyvyan who served as a Siege Battery officer in the Royal Garrison A…

In the first of three Bonus Episodes of the podcast to end Season 8, we travel to Fricourt on the Somme and examine the journey to unveil a memorial to the 17th (Northern) Division in the church ther…

In the final episode of our Air War series we travel across the landscape of the First World War and discover what we can find that connects us to the story of the Royal Flying Corps and RAF in WW1, …

In this special and extended QnA Episode we look at Parachutes in the Air Services in WW1, the Ground Crew who kept the planes in the air, what are the best RFC/RAF memoirs of WW1, how the filming of…

In the second of our special interviews for the War in the Air series, we are joined by historian and broadcaster Josh Levine to discuss the war in the air in WW1, based on his best-selling book On A…

For our 250th episode of the podcast, and as part of our continuing Air War series, we are joined by aviation historian and author Andy Saunders to look at the life, and death, of Edward 'Mick' Manno…

For the start of our War in the Air Month, we begin with a look at the real story of the 'Twenty Minuters', the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force in the First World War. We look at its history f…

For our latest questions submitted by podcast listeners, we examine what my first visit to the battlefields of the Great War with my school meant to me, ask what the Wiltshire Regiment did in the Fir…

Our latest questions from podcast listeners discuss what role German steel helmets, Stahlhelm, had on the First Day of the Somme, how did Great War veterans feel about WW2, how were women who fell pr…

As the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme approaches, we walk part of the battlefield across the iconic Mash Valley, visit Ovillers Military Cemetery and walk through Ovillers village to the far …

Our latest questions from listeners range from could Britain have stood back from conflict in 1914 and not been part of the Great War, how accurate was the final dugout scene in the film 1917, what d…

In a Trench Chat special we speak to the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre Commemorations team - otherwise known as 'The MOD War Detectives' - who work to recover and identify the dead on the f…

Our listeners have a few intriguing questions: Is there still live ordnance in the moat at the Ypres Ramparts? What exactly was the role of Inland Waterways Transport during the First World War? How …

In this episode we travel to the Arras Memorial to the Missing, where we explore the powerful story of over 35,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers with no known grave. In this episode, we uncover t…

In this episode we discuss the improvised gas masks used by British and Commonwealth soldiers in 1915, the advancement in medical treatment during the Great War, whether soldiers were told in advance…

In this episode we start a look at some of the Forgotten Memoirs of the First World War, starting with Percy Croney's 'Soldiers Luck' published in the mid-1960s. Croney was a 1914 volunteer who serve…

In this episode of podcast listeners questions we ask: what Great War items would you take to a Desert Island, how was cause of death accurately reported or not by the military authorities, how did m…

In a special Trench Chat we speak to Philipp Cross who has written a superb book about his great-great grandfather's war as an officer in the German Army. Alexander Pfeifer served from the very begin…

In this episode we ask were there any 'Thankful Villages' in France where everyone came home, what was 'Camp Elisabeth' at Verdun as visited by Professor Richard Holmes in the 1990s, did Great War so…