Award-winning actors read war poetry for More4's Remembrance Weekend

8 November 2013

This weekend (9th and 10th November), More4 will once again mark Remembrance Sunday with a weekend of war poetry and programming.  This year, the coverage is being expanded to encompass conflicts and poems from World War One to the present day, and the emphasis is as much on remembering those who returned from war as those who didn’t.  The weekend culminates in the first broadcast of Our Soldiers: Return to Civvy Street – a one-off documentary film from True Vision looking at the practical and emotional challenges faced by three former British servicemen as they adjust to civilian life.

This year’s poems are read by a trio of award-winning actors: Noel Clarke, Christopher Eccleston and Vicky McClure.  They include works by Seamus Heaney, John Agard, Carol Ann Duffy and Dunya Mikhail – each read as a stand-alone short film to be broadcast between programmes. They’ll be showing throughout the weekend along with last year’s shorts, in which poems from World War One were read by Gemma Arterton, Sean Bean, Stephen Graham and Sophie Okonedo.

The weekend’s other programming will include the powerful docudrama The Somme, World War I documentary War Horse: The Real Story and a first-person account of the Falklands’ Most Daring Raid. The poetry shorts were commissioned by John Hay, Commissioning Editor in Specialist Factual, who said, “It’s easy for those of us who have never been to war to feel disconnected from the experience of conflict, but these poems make it vivid, immediate and terrifyingly real.  We’re extremely grateful to Christopher, Vicky and Noel for bringing the words to life so sensitively and powerfully in these beautifully-crafted short films.”

The poems which will feature over More4’s Remembrance Weekend are:

In Times of Peace (by John Agard) read by Noel Clarke

How To Kill (by Keith Douglas) read by Noel Clarke

 

Dulce Et Decorum Est (by Wilfred Owen) read by Christopher Eccleston

Testimony (by Seamus Heaney) read by Christopher Eccleston

 

Last Post (by Carol Ann Duffy) read by Vicky McClure

The War Works Hard (by Dunya Mikhail) read by Vicky McClure

 

Arms and the Boy (by Wilfred Owen) read by Gemma Arterton

Suicide in the Trenches (by Siegfried Sassoon) read by Stephen Graham

The Soldier (by Rupert Brooke) read by Sophie Okonedo

Anthem for Doomed Youth (by Wilfred Owen) read by Sean Bean

 

For preview clips and more information on More4’s Remembrance Weekend visit http://www.channel4.com/remembrance.

 

ENDS

Production Information:
Executive Producers: Ollie Tait
Director: Jenny Ash

Production Company: Shiver
Commissioning Editor, Specialist Factual: John Hay