Forgotten Voices (Oberon Modern Plays) - Softcover

McKay, Malcolm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840027894 ISBN 13: 9781840027891

Publisher: Oberon Books Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

The astonishing adaptation, by Malcolm McKay, of Max Arthur's bestselling and acclaimed book, "Forgotten Voices", is based on the spoken testimony of veterans of the First World War, collected by the Sound Archive of the Imperial War Museum in 1970. Five ordinary survivors - four men and one woman - movingly reveal their memories, which make up a complete narrative of an awesome war. 'Very few men are still alive who fought in the trenches in the First World War. The words of the soldiers, however, are as fresh as if they were written yesterday. Extraordinary.' - "The Mail on Sunday". "Forgotten Voices" will run at the Assembly Theatre, Edinburgh throughout August, before transferring to the Riverside, London.

About this title

Review:

Max Arthur's compilation of First World War memories, Forgotten Voices of the Great War, offers a reminder of the scale of human experience within the 1914-18 conflict. Arthur, a military historian best known for his history of the RAF and his account of the Falklands campaign in 1982, has assembled hundreds of excerpts from the sound archives of the Imperial War Museum. Officers, rank-and-file troops, Australians, Americans, war widows, women in the munitions factories, and German soldiers too, all left oral testimony of their experiences, and these interviews provide the basis of the book. Arthur has put them in chronological and campaign order, and provided a general commentary, but beyond that, has left the rich and moving record to speak for itself.

The sheer humdrum ordinariness of modern warfare--the mud and rain, the relentless loss of life and inevitability of death, the pointless routine of attrition--come over in the matter-of-fact recollections of so many. But so too does the humanity and morality of the ordinary soldier--a factor that rather belies the recent emphasis amongst some historians on how soldiers loved to kill. Arthur might have intruded more. No biographical information is given about the owners of these "voices", nor does he say when, where and how this oral testimony was gathered.

These quibbles aside this is a worthwhile read and should encourage people not only to observe a minute's silence on Remembrance Day, but also to spend a few hours in the Imperial War Museum itself. --Miles Taylor

Review:

...The poems of Wilfred Owen are pretty things... -- Sunday Telegraph

...crammed with such details, conjuring up the atmosphere of war as vividly as the frequent descriptions of appalling violence -- Saturday Telegraph

..this is pure oral history: real people telling their own stories – with heart rendering, sometimes blood-chilling immediacy. -- The Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Oberon Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1840027894
• ISBN 13: 9781840027891
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 60