![]() ![]() The angst the Tories have about not wanting to have a whiney, Blackadder view of the war is because there's a lot of debate in Britain about who the British are, is it still a great power, what happens if Scotland breaks away? And Labour is probably saying: 'We see a different sort of Britain, and we must remember the working classes in the war.' As ever, present preoccupations shape perceptions of the past. When the politicians get involved they have their own agendas, and the debate becomes caught up with what they think of Britain today. "Historians have been debating it at quite a high level. I put that question aside, and instead ask what she has made so far of the commemoration. ![]() ![]() "Don't ask me who started the war or I'll burst into tears," she says when we meet on the eve of her departure for Canada. Her Radio 4 series, 1914: Day by Day, is in full swing – contemporary impressions that take the listener through that summer apocalypse a century ago her acclaimed book, The War That Ended Peace, is just out in paperback and she will be flying back from her hometown of Toronto next week to attend the service at Westminster Abbey on 4 August that marks Britain's entry into the war. ![]() M argaret MacMillan, professor of international history at Oxford and a leading interpreter of the first world war, is everywhere right now. ![]()
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