Britain used to treat her dead soldiers with disdain. One man changed that
How Fabian Ware transformed the aftermath of war
WHAT MATTERED was the shadow of the sun on the stone. The letters on the gravestones of the Great War should be deep enough and the angle of their engraving sharp enough, the commission on war graves decided, that someone—a mother say, or a father—walking between the rows could read the name of their son at a distance of six feet. Stonemasons struggle to achieve this: a chisel likes its own lean and to go steeper is to struggle against stone. But the commission was adamant. The letters were to be in an identical font, cut at an angle of 60 degrees and to a depth of three-sixteenths of an inch.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “They shall not grow old”
Britain November 13th 2021
- Can smaller reactors make nuclear power economic?
- Britons want to prevent climate change, but favour expensive solutions
- The Northern Ireland protocol is under threat. Again
- London’s bridges are falling down
- Voters do not want MPs to profit from their job
- Which products are scarce on Britain’s shelves?
- Britain used to treat her dead soldiers with disdain. One man changed that
- How Boris Johnson’s failure to tackle sleaze among MPs could prove costly
From the November 13th 2021 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from Britain
Britain’s brokers are diversifying and becoming less British
London’s depleted stockmarket is forcing them to change
What a buzzy startup reveals about Britain’s biotech sector
Lots of clever scientists, not enough business nous
Britain’s government lacks a clear Europe policy
It should be more ambitious over getting closer to the EU
The Rachel Reeves theory of growth
The chancellor says it’s her number-one priority. We ask her what that means for Britain