The big poppy row: remembering World War One 1914-1918

This blog is about low-carbon family travel. After visiting the Tower of London's ceramic poppy field I wanted to find out if this type of public art has a useful effect on my 13 year old daughter. If you like a quick read, then the answer is yes. Here's why...

888,246 poppies to remember the British & colonial servicemen who died during World War One.

In early November volunteers cleaning up a canal in Mile End - London's East End - found an unexploded World War 2 (1939-45) grenade. Debbie Vidler from the Canal & River Trust gave the BBC a marvellous quote:

"We often find weird and wonderful things in the bottom of canals. Today we discovered numerous shopping trolleys, bicycles, mobile phones... but we were not expecting to find a 70-year-old unexploded bomb..."

It's the unexpected that brings history closer, and although it's 100 years since the carnage of World War 1 (1914-18) began, its effect lingers on just like that other war's unexploded bomb.

I've been to see the ceramic poppies at the Tower of London (more a cycle past type of salute) as have tens of thousands of people. It seems to be something non-Londoners feel compelled to do. Indeed most of my Hertfordshire-based family have come up for a look and my brother organised for our great-grandfather Mervyn Hamilton's name to be read out before the last post was sounded. He died of his wounds after one of the early battles.

Names of lost servicemen at the Menin Gate

Looking over Ypres's oddly shaped square towards the Menin Gate.

As part of an effort to make sure my children's history is wide-reaching during the summer we went to Ypres in Belgium (by train). There's an amazing museum in the rebuilt Cloth Hall called In Flanders Field. It caters for multi-languages, all ages and interest in WW1 - but in particular the dead relatives from that war who come from everywhere and from every side. The Allies may have won the battle, but like the Germans the impact of the war had fearful emotional repercussions on many Europeans - and many others too. For those who lost a father or uncle or brother or husband that impact trickles down the generations. And so many did: there were 37 million military and civilian casualties.

At the Menin Gate - where the last post is played at 8pm every night - there are 1,000s of names inscribed into the pale Bath stone. All the names are of servicemen who were unable to be buried because their bodies were never recovered - something my 13-year-old found hard to understand (thankfully). It's chilling.

And that's what the poppies are not.

The poppies at the Tower of London make you glad to be alive. They are a beautiful red carpet put together by craftsman to make (hopefully) a temporal art work that has got us all thinking about WW1's anniversary.

"I found it really pretty and a great way to remember the one's that didn't make it," said Nell who went with her Dad to the Tower to have a look on a very rainy Sunday during half-term. A mix of activities have helped her understand the war far better than I did at her age. She's performed in a school production of Oh What A Lovely War!, has already been to Ypres (by train) and is due a school trip (by coach) to the battle fields of the Somme soon. She is also reading a proper page turner (historical romance for teenagers, although I loved it too) called Valentine Joe by Rebecca Stevens.

Now politicians are calling for the display to last a little bit longer than 11 November, Armistice Day. I guess it's a win for the MPs as the poppies will surely take as long to remove as they did to install. This is a proper crowd-sourced project that has spread far further than the Royal British Legion's fundraising efforts. As an art work I don't like it much - far too saccharine for a war memorial, but as craftsmanship I rate it and as a way of getting so many of us talking about World War 1 I think it's been sheer genius.

What do you think?

Doing battle in St Albans

Top: 50 people on a Wars of the Roses tour in St Albans; At the White Hart Tap;  UK's oldest pub Ye Olde Fighting Cocks - the Lancastrians were camped at the very top of this hill on the other side of the Abbey; Don't forget the Romans' influence; Nell by a Wars of the Roses sign, which was mistakenly put up on the wrong side of the road.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post takes a tour of St Albans, and finds quarrelsome ghosts refighting the Wars of the Roses. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).    


2012
It's St Albans and Saturday shoppers are battle weary from the unseasonal May heat - dodging the crowds to find a shop stocking an outfit that fits or a welcoming inn. In queues, dressing rooms, near shade there's someone on the mobile doing battle. How can you tell that on this day five hundred plus years ago history was being made? Well the road layout is pretty much the same...

1455
The York (white rose) and King Henry VI's Lancaster (red rose) troops meet up at St Albans about 7am. Both have had a long march. York is allegedly ever so contrite, trying to get a guarantee that the man who wants to be king, Richard, Duke of York, isn't about to be put to death. But King Henry's (or his advisers) are not in a trusting mood. They don't accept any grovelling note, but rather foolishly delay putting on their armour... So when York gives up suing for peace and decides to fight it out the Lancastrians aren't battle fit and are polished off by archers.

Those arrows came at 100mph, with armor on it was an arrow in the eye that was the danger. Without the full protective metal kit you hadn't a hope - especially if there were enough arrows "to block out the sun" shot at you by the York's force. I'm pretty certain this super successful part of the battle was organised by Warwick (who had to break through the walls of a pub, now a building society) to join the fight. Warwick goes on to have extreme influence in the Wars of the Roses - except crucially who his boss Richard's son Edward marries.

Back on 22 May, 1455 it was a straight York-Lancaster fight. The residents scatter. The villagers coming into town for market day get windy about St Albans (a fear rightly borne out as some years later in 1461 at the 2nd battle of St Albans, also during the Wars of the Roses), which seems a place where trouble is always brewing. For the next 400 years those villagers market in Harpenden, in the opposite direction...

Winner takes all, almost
The first battle of the Wars of the Roses is over in less than two hours with York the winner. As it turns out the Duke of York doesn't ever get crowned, but two of his sons do - Edward VI and his brother Richard III. His great grandaughter goes on to marry Richard III's successor, Henry VII and thus becomes the mother of Henry VIII.

And we know all about it because the abbot at St Albans wrote an eye-witness account of the battle. An early blogger?

History's so simple when you walk around the streets with a guide like Peter Burley (ex York) who knows exactly what happened - where the Duke of York's horse was killed (just by the traffic lights), which pubs and shops the two sides made their HQs (The White Horse Tap for York and Boots the Chemist for Lancaster).

As I'm an alumnus of York it seemed like a fun idea to join this tour for former York or Lancaster uni students, not least because Pete (my husband) graduated from Lancaster so we can do our own Wars of the Roses re-enactment if we want.... Our 11 and 13 year old daughters came too and to their suprise enjoyed seeing the narrow streets where you could only fit three abreast in a fight. Everyone else had to queue up behind. We were soon imagining the misery of the Duke of Somerset (a king's man) who'd avoided castles for years thanks to a prophecy in his youth from a sorcerer, Roger Bolingbroke who said (paraphrased!) "Stay away from castles," but then discovered he'd taken sanctuary in The Castle Inn. Once discovered he was killed by York men.

Ice cream top ups and a punnet of the first strawberries of the year, off a market stall near the clock tower, kept the kids going when horrible histories and stupid deaths can't.

Good job we had such an expert guide as there is still no signage, or even a battlefield tour despite this fascinating battle taking place in the centre of St Albans in streets we know and use today. But you can self-guide yourself using the book, The Battles of St Albans, co-authored by Peter Burley, who is also national co-ordinator for the UK Battlefields Trust.

Verdict: great day out
Where did you go: St Albans, Herts - for a histronaut walk to the Wars of the Roses 1455.
USP - Britain's oldest pub, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks - building been there since 14th century, and a pub been on the site, just by the river, since the 8th century.
Too busy to mention: the Romans! St Albans is also all about the hypercourse, Verulamium etc.
Learn anything else: Yes Shakespeare, he really gave the York side a bad time in his history plays. For instance it's unlikely that the three year old infant Richard (who would become "evil" Richard III who we know as the one who manages to kill his cousins, the two little princes in the tower) would have been at the battle, let alone killed the full-grown castle-fearing Duke of Somerset.

Over to you
Where's your favourite place to go to get a sense of history?

Frontline

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during the summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint…

It’s nearly a month since we came back home to London and I’m on my first trip out to London – Paddington to be precise. This sounds silly, after all I live in London but even though I live in a busy, crowded bit of Islington it doesn't have the vibe that I associate with central London. This time I'm just using the underground so I can meet my lovely friend Nicky, who normally lives in Zimbabwe, and have a delicious dinner at the very stylish Frontline Club which even the insiders reckon is famous as “a place for those with a nomadic temperament to gather and not tell war stories”. We discuss all sorts, including how fast London changes - she's been away 10 years and is stunned by the crowds of 20 and 30 somethings; I've been away three months and can't remember how to exit instinctively from the tube.

Frontline is the right place to meet: I still want to be a nomad even if I'm not sure when I'm going back to Africa, and I've never ever had a war correspondent's temperament.