Monday, August 4th commemorated the beginning of the First World War. The war to end all wars.

ITV The Great War
ITV are releasing the four-part drama during the WW1 Centenary.

To celebrate the centenary, ITV have commissioned a 4 part drama series, The Great War – The Peoples Stories.

In partnership with the Imperial War Museum and sourced by archives and libraries from all over the country, each letter and story is heart whelming in its own way and portrays the lives of the soldiers that fought and died for our country and their family and loved ones left behind.

Portrayed by some of Britain’s most famous actors including Daniel Mays (Mrs. Biggs), Claire Foy, Alison Steadman (Gavin and Stacey) and Romola Garai (The Hour) and narrated Olivia Coleman (Broadchurch) each episode expresses the hopes and fears of many of the soldiers, privates and officers through the moving accounts of ordinary people at a time of war.

According to the ITV press centre, the first episode follows Reg Evans, “a cockney lad and one of the first to volunteer to fight.  He found himself a hero in the trenches, his journey told through moving letters to his anxious mother at home.  

Matthew McNulty plays Alan Lloyd, an upper-crust young man from Birmingham who joined the army in the same month he was married:  his letters to his new wife from the battlefields of Ypres reveal the shock of a generation of young men coming to terms with a war more terrible than anyone had foreseen.  

Myanna Buring plays Dorothy Lawrence, a young woman determined to find a part she could play in the war… and who set off on her own to the trenches, undercover as a war correspondent.   Adam Byron plays James Butlin, a young Oxford University student, whose letters indicate initial positivity on joining the conflict disintegrating into despair as the reality of trench warfare takes its toll”.

Director General of the Imperial War Museum, Diane Lees commented:

“IWM is pleased to have worked in partnership with ITV on the development of The People’s Story – The Great War. The Imperial War Museum was established while the First World War was still being fought, to ensure future generations would remember those who contributed during the conflict.

This series, featuring a number of people whose diaries and letters are held in the museum’s archives, gives an insight into some of the experiences and innermost thoughts of individuals from the time. Now that the war is out of living memory, it is up to our generation to ensure that their stories are and continue to be told – the stories of ordinary people living through extraordinary times.”

Alongside the series there will also be a book that will be published as well as three eBooks.

 The Great War-The Peoples Stories begins on ITV, Sunday at 9pm

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