Centenary: Words And Music Of The Great War

Two of our most popular and distinguished actors, Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton, have teamed up with the celebrated West Country acoustic band Show of Hands (Steve Knightley, Phil Beer and Miranda Sykes) to mark the centenary of the First World War. The conflict lasted for four years, led to the deaths of over sixteen million soldiers and civilians, and transformed Britain and much of the world. But the brutal carnage and the horrors of life in the trenches inspired the War Poetry, an extraordinary artistic movement written by those who fought, and in some cases died, in the fighting. Unique and powerful, Centenary Words & Music Of The Great War matches the remarkable poetry of those war years against the music of the era, along with new compositions inspired by the war. This double CD release includes one disc of twenty two poems read by Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton in new musical settings and a second disc on which Show of Hands perform distinctive versions of period favourites plus new songs from Knightley, including The Gamekeeper, and his setting for Housman’s The Lads In Their Hundreds.