AQA (A): Paper 2 Texts in shared contexts: Section B
In her Introduction to Max Arthur’s Soldiers’ Songs of the First World War, Lyn Macdonald writes, ‘The music, the laughter, and, above all, the songs… represent the ascendancy of the human spirit over the cruel inhumanity of the war itself’ (Arthur 2001, p. xxx). This provides a useful starting point for an exploration of the irreverent and entertaining soldiers’ songs in The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (Walter 2006) and suggests a comparison with The Wipers Times, the play conceived in 2013 by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman as a salute to the resilience of the brave men who ‘under enemy fire’ produced the satirical trench newspaper that gave the play its name. A key target for the soldiers, both in their songs and in the original trench newspaper articles, was the ‘cushy’ existence of those back home in ‘Blighty’, in contrast to the mud, blood and discomfort of the Western Front. The chasm between them and us, England and the trenches, became central to contemporary writing about the war. Pat Barker, in Life Class (2007), presents a retrospective exploration of the same theme.
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