Hello Again to All That: or is it time to move on from WWI?

There is a whiff of ‘war porn’ about the footage of wretched men staggering towards machine-guns

WWI soldiers behind a barbed wire
(Image credit: Allen H. Hanson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Robert Graves, the poet who served as an officer in the First World War, in 1929 wrote a best-selling memoir, Good-bye to All That. Graves was saying farewell to many aspects of British life, but his principal adieu was to the Great War in which he was severely injured (so badly that his family were informed that he had been killed).

His book appeared 11 years after hostilities ceased. Eighty-nine years on, the nation is wallowing again in the mud of the Western Front. ‘Hello Again to All That.’

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Robert Chesshyre writes regularly on police culture and is a former US correspondent of The Observer. His books include ‘The Force: Inside the Police’ and 'When the Iron Lady Ruled Britain''.