Welcome to another trench chats, and I'm really pleased this week to be joined by Stephen Bourne, the author of Black Poppies.

Stephen's an author and historian who looks at the story of Black soldiers in the Great War, and has also done a lot of research on what is an even more forgotten subject,

which is the history of gay men in both the First and the Second World War as well.

And maybe that's something else we might return to another day.

But today, we're going to look at your work, your really important work that you've done,

on really shining some light on this forgotten part of the Great War and the involvement of black soldiers who fought for Britain.

Yes, absolutely. More than happy to talk about how that book came about.

So for you, you were saying to me as we were kind of having a chat before we started,

that it kind of began with your own family and growing up in London

and watching the Great War series.

Well, I was conscious at a very young age.

I couldn't have been more than six,

of this powerful BBC documentary series,

The Great War that was being shown,

because older people in my family were watching it.

I think it was one of the first to kind of bring that story to life to a mass audience.

And I just remember it being on. I was far too young to watch it.

I mean, I was more interested in Fulci, the Battery Boy.

But I remember my grandfather watching it.

We happened to be in their home at the time and they turned it on. And he got very distressed and very upset and started crying. I mean, he was a young man of 19 when he went to the Battle of the Somme with the army. And tragically was shot in the face by sniper and was lost the sight of one eye.

But so he was blinded in one eye for the rest of his life.

But in a way, it probably saved his life because if he hadn't been sent back home,

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