The cultural appropriation of the first world war

Last week I was in the Somme, visiting the first world war battlefields before the great and the good descend on the region this week to mark the centenary of the Armistice.

In one cemetery I found propped against the headstone of Captain Frank Morkill a plastic folder, left two months earlier by a relative. Inside was a facsimile of his last letter home, written three days before he was killed in action on September 15 1916. ‘I can truly say without any mock heroism that I am only too thankful to have seen the dawn of Germany’s downfall,’ wrote Morkill, a Canadian, who had been wounded twice in previous fighting. ‘Also, that on the anniversary of my first year of war I am here to help in that overthrow, and here with several of my best friends.’

Such buoyant letters from the trenches were the norm during the war, a fact that surprised the Duchess of Cambridge last week during a visit to the Imperial War Museum.