by David Adam, Nick Fawcett, Ray Simpson, Christine Titmus
Kevin Mayhew, 2010
(with free CD)
“Who is the slayer, who the victim? Speak.” Sophocles, 3rd Century BC.
Remembrance Sunday is the time when the words we speak take on a particular power and significance. This collection was devised not as a substitute for traditional Remembrance Sunday commemorations but to make them more resonant, more open to the reality of war and its costs.
These reflections are offered only as suggestions. Some passages are a bit too earnest and wordy for my taste but the variety on offer serves the overall aim: to help individuals and communities to bring their thoughts and prayers to bear upon their own particular losses as they gather round War Memorials across the land, bearing witness to what the WWI poet Wilfred Owen called the Pity of War. Owen was not alone in unmasking the ‘old lie’ of glory and honour. As a veteran of the same conflict put it, “War’s stupid. Nobody wins”.
True then. True in Sophocles’ time, but never more so perhaps than today when the slaughter is totally indiscriminate and on a scale unknown in previous ages, when we are being challenged as never before to build a global culture in which non-violent settlement of disputes is the norm rather than a Utopian dream. Which is of course very precisely what MAW was set up to do. This book should help us all say, ‘Never again, for their sake’.
(This book contains the whole of the original MAW booklet, Remembrance for Today [published Sept 2007] along with additional material by other authors. Substantial information about MAW is included.)
