Know Your Enemy

"Self-evidently it was a catastrophe – as we speak there are 888,246 poppies outside the Tower of London, with each one representing a dead British citizen – and afterwards the worst aspects of western civilisation got the upper hand. The rats crawled out from under the debris. Famously Michael Gove has claimed that it was a war that had to be fought and that Blackadder denigrates it, which is an absolute nonsense. Blackadder is deeply respectful of the human spirit, to the heroism and the brotherly love of the British solider. But it is also legitimately satirising a complete collapse of original thinking. The First World War was 20th-century technology meeting 19th-century thinking."

Not exactly topical any more, and ordinarily I have very little time for Ben Elton these days, but this comment on the First World War and Michael Gove's criticism of Blackadder Goes Forth's depiction of it is spot on.