The Last Post: Music, Remembrance and the Great War

by Alwyn Turner

At two minutes past eleven, on the morning of 11 November 1919, a lone bugle call sounded across the British Empire. It signalled the end of the first two-minute silence held to remember the fallen of the Great War, and marked the moment when the Last Post became the default refrain for grief and remembrance in British public life. Published in the centenary year of the First World War’s outbreak, and written by one of the UK’s leading cultural historians, this fascinating monograph will investigate the impact of the conflict on Britain’s attitudes to its war dead, and demonstrate how so simple and seemingly unremarkable a piece of music has attained such a powerful, near sacred status.    

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2015