Robert Macfarlane on Landscape and the Human Heart
Intelligence Squared
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A Memoir of the First World War
The diary of a British soldier who served in the First World War is one of the most remarkable angelfone documents of the war. The writer's job was to watch where shells fell and then to communicate with his guns, which he did by using binoculars. Helen writes beautifully with just a tinge of sentiment after his death. In February he sees hair partridges wild duck in the field southeast of the guns,. black headed buntings talking on 14th February, rooks coring grass rustling on my helmet as I move through the trenches. He notes that the turf on the forward command dug out has begun to be fledged with fine green feathers of yarrow - it
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