Captain Grekov’s eyes
This is a memorable description of Captain Grekov, commander of House 6/1 in the rubble of Stalingrad, summing up so...
Sun-darkening arrows
Describing the shower of arrows at Thermopylae falling so thick and fast that they blot out the sun's light. Leonidas,...
Torment-filled pupil
This doesn't refer to a struggling school child but rather the traumatic last moments of a horse in a war...
War and letters
Letters were a lifeline for people in war, whether fighting it or waiting for someone who was, or simply trying...
Church bells and cannon fodder
If swords can be beaten into ploughshares, the reverse is also true, and church bells can be melted down as...
That’s no way to speak to God
Here we have Helen’s cuckolded husband Menalaus screaming at God in the most colourful terms. I like the idea of...
The Thirty Years War in thirty seconds
Winder has a pithiness about him that condenses decades of internecine squabbling and violence into a snappy summary of the...
Long-somnolent border
In the absence of functioning treaties or other guarantees of peace, let us pray for long-somnolent borders that they may...
Poems for my family 007 – Carlos Williams
Listening time: under 3 minutes.
The lovely opening line of this poem by William Carlos Williams creates a...
Of time and trees
Saint-Exupéry shows starkly how war changes the calculus on a sixpence. Trees which have been nurtured and enjoyed for hundreds...
War in all its gory
Steinbeck met a number of people in the Soviet Union who had survived the worst depredations of the Second World...
Bronze-armoured Achaians
The Trojan war was a Bronze Age affair, magnificently evoked in different sea-surrounded places by two books of Adam Nicolson....
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