Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort
BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet discusses Edith Wharton's reportage from wartime France.
The Essay · BBC Radio 3
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Show Notes
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in their work.
BBC Correspondent Lyse Doucet, fresh from her experiences in Afghanistan and Syria, introduces novelist Edith Wharton's reportage from wartime France, 'Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort'.
Wharton, best known for 'The Age Of Innocence' and 'The House of Mirth', was granted unique access to the Western front and wrote one of the most evocative and undeservedly neglected accounts of life in France in World War One.
In its pages, penned early in the war, are Wharton's painterly descriptions of the country's overnight transformation from peace to war, her deep love for France and its people, and her accounts of the destruction wrought upon the villages and towns in the path of the German invader.
Producer: Benedict Warren.