Eric Bogle Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Songs Churchill Would Love: “Willie McBride”

13 February 2017 Comments 3 Comments

Sir Martin Gilbert’s moving book, The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War, ends with verses from “Willie McBride,” by the Scottish-Australian songwriter Eric Bogle, which carry an evergreen message to all generations, and capture what Churchill thought of modern war—which he tried so hard, before both World Wars, to avoid.

Sir Martin wrote that in research for the book, he and Lady Gilbert found the grave of Private William McBride, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, killed April 1916, two months before the Somme. Whether this was the grave of Eric Bogle’s subject is immaterial.…

Centenary of the Great War: Let the Spin Begin

5 January 2014 Comments 2 Comments

Tristram Hunt on the Great War

I didn’t expect to find myself agreeing with Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt. But take a look at his Great War article “Bashing History,” and see what you think.

We’re going to be reading a lot of silly nonsense about the Great War in the next year or two, and Hunt’s preemptive strike is a salutary warning.

His piece recalls a poetic answer to Eric Bogle’s famous poem “Willie McBride,” written by Stephen Suffet in 1997:

Ask the people of Belgium or Alsace-Lorraine,

If my life was wasted, if I died in vain.…