The Crimson Field

One hundred years ago today my grandfather was 46 years old and my grandmother was 38. My mother was 5. I can't for the moment lay my hands on my father's passport but he must have been about 14. The First World War, of course, was a treat in store. I wonder when we first started calling it the First World War or World War I. Logically, it couldn't have been before 1939 and more probably 1945. Before then, I suppose it was referred to as The Great War or perhaps The War to End All Wars.

This is the third time I have embarked on this next paragraph, having forgotten to save  my deathless prose on the two previous occasions. I see that the six-part BBC drama series The Crimson Field has attracted adverse criticism in some quarters; it has been dismissed as melodramatic and sentimental. The plot, which follows the lives of nurses working on the Western Front during the First World War, does indeed suffer from trying to pack in too many themes in a short time and it certainly brings a 21st century sensibility to events that occurred 100 years ago, but superb acting and directing grips the viewer, and the series is no more melodramatic or sentimental than, say, Holocaust or Philadelphia which did so much to arouse popular awareness and change attitudes on other matters.

A special word of praise for Oona Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin's grandaughter, and Alice St Clair who portrays perhaps the most interesting character in the drama.