That said, the silence also fed him. He found solace in the withdrawal from the daily routine. “I found myself meditating on the word ‘Maranatha’ [Come, Lord]. I say that twice a day, ideally for 30 minutes, and it takes me to a place beyond fear, beyond striving,” he says. In what ways has Seldon’s book or Gillespie’s dream changed how you think about peace and peace-building? You might also enjoy ‘ Sierra Leone Peace and Cultural Monument‘, ‘ Padre Steve’s Christmas Journey of Healing‘, ‘ Peace Through Movement‘ and ‘ Care for Nature‘.

The walk has changed his life, enabling him to find greater peace personally. He married again earlier this year. Now, the ambition of Sir Anthony and his fellow enthusiasts is that the Western Front Way should become one of the great long treks in Europe: a northern equivalent of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela — something that offers a mix of physical challenge and camaraderie alongside the possibility of spiritual growth. Anthony Seldon is no disinterested writer. Convinced that Douglas Gillespie’s dream was “the best idea that emerged from the war”, he set up a charity to create the Western Front Way – no simple task given that very little of the lines of the trenches remain and that much of the countryside destroyed by wars is now grassed over, planted with trees, or restored to working farmland. This book is his account of his own journey on foot along the route of the Western Front Way, from Vosges Mountains (Kilometer Zero) to the Channel, a total of 1,000 kilometers which he accomplished in 35 days in August/September 2021.It was a journey of exploration and discovery, but also, importantly, a pilgrimage. “It was a pilgrimage, because it was about honouring that one soldier. . . I was doing something for Gillespie that he couldn’t do himself,” he says now. Fittingly, Gillespie carried a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress with him. The book comprises many themes: there is the walk itself, the war, the unknown warriors in need of a champion, the charity too needing a champion, and the author’s own thirst for a drink and medical attention for his blisters. And swirling through this mix is the grief which Seldon feels after the loss of his wife.

Timely, poignant and passionate. Seldon skillfully weaves the personal with the historical.' Katya Adler In the East End of London, my father must have heard the sirens at 11 am on 11 November 1918, signalling the end of the war, but aged just two and a half would not have understood what the sound meant. Nor did local people, who thought it was to announce a Zeppelin raid. During the First World War, a young soldier called Douglas Gillespie used a letter home from the trenches to expound on an idea for remembering the dead after the fighting was over. Gillespie proposed a path from the English Channel to Switzerland, following the route of the line that had formed to become the Western Front. Sadly, Gillespie could not act on his dream, as he was killed shortly after the letter was sent. Years later, while researching a different book, historian Sir Anthony Seldon found it. A few years passed and, gripped by his own annus horribilis, Seldon decided to break with all the surety of his previous life: his family, a permanent home, and his work. Instead, Seldon embarked on a solo walk of the entire route that Gillespie had proposed. This book, The Path of Peace, is the story of Seldon’s remarkable adventure. Reflecting on history, travel, memories of ancestors who had lived with the shadow of the Great War, and the nature of grief itself, the story has a lot to offer. I for one am happy to devote the rest of my life to seeing Gillespie’s magnificent roaring dream become a reality,” he ends the book, before quoting from Matthew 5.9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”

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So he came up with the novel idea, which he wrote about to his old headmaster and his parents in June 1915. His hope was that “when peace comes, our government might combine with the French government to make one long avenue between the lines from the Vosges to the sea”. He called it the “Via Sacra”, the “sacred street”. England has been all she could be to Jews, Jews will be all they can be to England”, stated the Jewish Chronicle on the outbreak of war in 1914. The family eked out a living converting the downstairs room into a haberdashery shop despite the family business suffering from periodic burglaries; but they felt safe at last from mortal danger. Young Arthur must have been disorientated after his parents had suddenly died, his siblings had disappeared, his home had changed not once but several times, and now he had a new mother looking after him. But he prevailed. “The intellectual architect of both Blairism and Thatcherism”, The Economist said of him on his death in 2005.

Anthony Sheldon [00:01:34] I became interested, I think, at a young age at school. But then when I became a school teacher and saw the syllabus and started learning about it, there's nothing better than to learn about anything than to start teaching. So I started teaching it. In my first year I directed Journey's End, the famous J.C. Sheriff brilliant play .. and I I took my cast across. I remember phoning the Imperial War Museum and said, I've never been, and they thought I was very green and they told me where to go including Beaumont Hamel and Sanctuary Wood, Thiepval and La Voiselle. We went to all those and it was huge fun. And that was the first, I think, of 70 trips that I've taken in the 35 years since So I mean, a pretty high level of interest probably. He wrote in his haunting poem August 1914: “What in our lives is burnt/ In the fire of this?/ The heart’s dear granary?/ The much we shall miss?”. He was killed in April 1918 near Arras, during the German Spring Offensive. Every Prime Minister I’ve written about has said they will regret they didn’t have more time to reflect. And, for me, the heart of reflection is faith.” There was this huge Western Front, all the way down into Switzerland, through Alsace and Lorraine. And the war ripped the soul and confidence out of the French people.” On the very western tip of Europe, there was no peace in Ireland. Nor for the “cornermen”, returning soldiers, damaged in body and mind, without jobs or hope, begging on street corners year after year. Nor on the eastern frontiers of Europe was there peace for the Jews, victims of the collapsing Russian empire…A journey of self-discovery and a pilgrimage of peace... A remarkable book by a remarkable man.' Michael Morpurgo A deeply informed meditation on the First World War, an exploration of walking’s healing power, a formidable physical achievement… and above all a moving enactment of a modern pilgrimage.’ Rory Stewart Although it would be another three years before the war was over, Douglas Gillespie had a vision for the future. “I wish that when peace comes, our government might combine with the French government to make one long Avenue between the lines from the Vosges to the sea,” he wrote. At German cemeteries of the First World War on the Western Front there are 3,000 grave markers with the Star of David. Before the war, my father’s parents Philip and Masha Margolis emigrated from the Ukrainian town of Pereiaslav near Kyiv (then part of the Russian Empire), and the 1911 census places them in Whitechapel. They had escaped from Tsarist persecution, pogroms and poverty, but in London’s East End, with Jews and Christians divided by streets, as my father’s brother Cecil recalls in his memoirs, “fighting and brawling was commonplace among the young”.

Sir Anthony Seldon will be talking about his book at the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature in February. A journey of self-discovery and a pilgrimage of peace… A remarkable book by a remarkable man.’ Michael Morpurgo Then, as during the Covid pandemic, relatives could not see loved ones close-up, so the older children waved a final goodbye to their parents in London Hospital from a safe distance. Philip and Masha died on 16 and 21 July , 1918, and are buried in Edmonton Jewish Cemetery. Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe's most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres. Along the way, he wrestled heat exhaustion, dog bites and blisters as well as a deeper search for inner peace and renewed purpose. Touching on grief, loss and the legacy of war, The Path of Peace is the extraordinary story of Anthony's epic walk, an unforgettable act of remembrance and a triumphant rediscovery of what matters most in life. Life was also very busy. For all the enthusiasm of a handful of individuals — given greater poignancy by the Brexit vote — no one had time to dedicate the uninterrupted attention the project needed.He writes about visiting the final resting places of the poet Edward Thomas, the musician George Butterworth, and the novelist Alain-Fournier, author of Le Grand Meaulnes — all victims of the war. The May 2016 Devolved Elections in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London: Convergences and Divergences There is much to admire in this account of his journey. Seldon gives us vivid descriptions of his aches and pains, blisters, moments of despondency and emergency visits to French hospitals, while making clear that they were as nothing compared with what the soldiers once went through. He has a historian’s enthusiasm and sharp eye for spotting and recounting good stories, many from the particular battlefields he is passing by. It is impossible not to be moved by a chaplain’s description of the last moments of a 19-year-old who had been court-martialled and sentenced to be shot: “I held his arm tight to reassure him and then he turned his blindfolded face to mine and said in a voice which wrung my heart, ‘Kiss me, sir, kiss me’, and with my kiss on his lips, and ‘God has you in his keeping’ whispered in his ear, he passed on into the Great Unseen.” Robert Graves, meanwhile, recalled an officer yelling at the men in his trench that they were “bloody cowards”, only for his sergeant to tell him: “Not cowards, sir. Willing enough. But they are all f-ing dead.” The book also includes some interesting wider reflections on Great War brothels, dentistry, dysentery, footwear, homosexuality and unexploded munitions – and whether “first-hand experience of war make[s] for better and wiser [political] leaders”. He wanted to know more about Gillespie, and soon discovered that his niece, great-nephews, and great-nieces were alive and were just as enthusiastic about the vision. The BBC Countryfile presenter Tom Heap is a great-nephew, which gave the project a boost. Supporters emerged, and the Western Front Way charity was formed. The Western Front Way is a free walking and cycling route along the WWI Western Front. It stretches over 1000km, from Switzerland to the Belgian coast.