The mighty red brick and Portland Stone Archway

of Luchens' Thiepval Memorial

looks down on the Thiepval Ridge

where on the first day of the Battle of the Somme

a football kicked by a Northern City star player

would open the tragedy of what happened here.

Thiepval proved once more that dead men can advance

no further. Welcome back to a new season of the old front line. We've had snow here in South

Yorkshire over the last couple of days and I'm looking now out across the valley where I live in

Elsica at the snow-covered fields

and it reminds me not just of those harsh winters of the Great War but of the times when I've

been out on the battlefields when I live there or when I've visited them when those two have been

covered by snow and it brings once more that longing to return to the western

fronts to the battlefields of epe and the psalm and indeed beyond those places and i hope that in the

coming year we'll all have that chance once more to walk along the old front line and i'll be out there

i hope recording some episodes on the grounds

giving them i think a little bit of extra depth that we can't quite achieve from a distance but until

that's possible we shall continue together here and this year marks the hundred and fifth

anniversary of the year 1916 that that middle year of the Great War,

which saw the two massive battles of Verdun and the Somme.

And with the odd episode during the course of this year, I'm going to look back 105 years

with a bit more history than battlefields to look at some of the subjects and issues connected

...