This is the third and final bonus episodes of season eight of the old frontline podcasts,

and I've come up onto the ramparts in the city of Eap.

We often start a podcast series on the Somme,

and this time it's kind of fitting perhaps to end here in Flanders

in this city of Eap that means so much to the sacrifice of the First World War,

the remembrance of the First World War, the remembrance of the First World War and that wider culture of the old front line.

And I've come to sit this evening on the rampart walls overlooking the Menin Gates.

As many of you who listen to the podcast will know or keep an eye on the news related

to the battlefields and the landscape of the First World War, this memorial has been under

renovation for the last few years. And for me, this is the first time I've come and been

able to gain full access to it again in the way that we used to get access to it before.

So it's quite nice to do that.

And I'm here this week because I'm walking the EAPE battlefields.

I'm here with my old friend and colleague, Dr. Victoria Humphreys,

and we're taking a ledger group around the battlefields of EAP and doing a double acts with me doing

the history and some of the anecdotes and her providing readings from some of the literature

and poetry of the First World War.

And it's an interesting group and an interested group who have a lot of connections to the fighting

here in the First World War.

This is one of the things that you discover when you bring parties of people to these battlefields.

You uncover all their family information and see their family photographs,

and we've seen a lot of that this week, which has been really great.

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