Poetry & Music: Marking the Centenary of the Outbreak of World War I

John Parr, the first British soldier to die in the Great War was born, educated and worked in Finchley. He was killed at the beginning of the war in Mons, Belgium aged 17. The first half of the programme will be devoted to readings of poetry by War Poets and material relating to John Parr and his bereaved family.

The second half will consist of a performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem a setting of Walt Whitman’s war poetry given by the London Ripieno Singers, conducted by geoffrey Hanson.