1914 is a series of over thirty previously unpublished verbatim accounts, poems and anecdotes covering the early months of the First World War: the famous retreat from Mons, the battles of Le Cateau, Néry, Marne and Aisne and finally the desperate defence of Ypres.
There are accounts of nurses in Antwerp; naval disasters in the Broad Fourteens; forays into the Bay of Bengal and Mesopotamia, and the famous Christmas truce, which at one point involved the singing of the Scottish folk song Annie Laurie in perfect English by a German officer on Christmas Eve.
The talk covers the events of 1914 through the eyes of old soldiers quite few of whom James knew in the 1960s and 1970s.
