Sounds of war

Amid all the remembrance, Radio 3 came up with a simple yet effective way of reflecting on war’s impact. Threaded throughout the day on Sunday were ‘sonic’ memorials, three minutes of silence, or rather opportunities to stop and reflect. Not the music of a requiem mass, or a lonesome bugle, but the sounds of those places where the worst battles in recent history — from Antietam in America (during the Civil War) to Huaihai (between the Kuomintang and communists in China) via the Somme, Stalingrad and Afghanistan — were played out. Allan Little introduced each pause in the day’s schedule, explaining in the barest outline what happened, how many were killed, who was fighting whom, what the place of desolation looks like now, before we were left with just the sound of crickets humming, birds singing, wind blowing through sun-bleached grass.

In Kent, beneath the white cliffs, the Battle of Britain is remembered each year, the first major air battle in any war.