This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures.

This lecture in the series War in Our World, given by John Keegan, was originally broadcast in 1998.

Welcome from the University of Glasgow. You join an invited audience in the splendid neo-gothic

surroundings of the university's Butte Hall. Gathered here are historians, other academics, defense specialists and former and serving

officers in the armed forces.

Built following a donation by the Marcus of Butte, the Butte Hall is used for graduation

ceremonies, concerts and examinations. The hall forms part of the main campus in Gilmore Hill,

much of it designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and to which the university moved from the city

centre in the late 19th century. In the 1920s, a chapel was added as a memorial to those members

of the university who died in the First World War. In their 50th anniversary year, it's especially appropriate that one of the Reith lectures is being given here in Glasgow.

This year, the BBC is celebrating 75 years of broadcasting in Scotland.

And John Reith, its first Director-General, was rector of Glasgow University in the 1960s,

and was educated at the Glasgow Academy and the Royal Technical College,

and some of his descendants are with us tonight.

We are guests of the University's Scottish Centre for War Studies,

which was established in 1996 to encourage research and understanding of war and all its aspects,

and is the editorial home of the quarterly journal, War in History.

Each year, the Centre attracts many distinguished speakers from all over the world,

and tonight, of course, the military historian John Keegan is here to give his fourth lecture in the series, War and Our World.

Last week, he traced the evolution of the nation-state and its role in causing conflict.

Tonight, he considers the impact of battle on those who have to fight.

So would you please now give a warm welcome to the 1998 wreath lecturer John Keegan.

...