Alexander Douglas Gillespie, the inspiration for the Western Front Way. Photograph: Imperial War Museum 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…

I could never forget Gillespie’s dream was to create not just a walking route along the front, but a path of peace. I would be walking in part to explore what he meant by that elusive word ‘peace’. What had it meant to those who fought in the war and survived? What did it mean to those whose livelihoods had depended on the millions of hectares ravaged by war? Out of an estimated Anglo-Jewish community of around 250,000, about 50,000 Jews enlisted. Many fought with the Jewish Brigade in Mandate Palestine. But others fought and died on the Western Front. Congratulations to The Western Front Way on the placement of their plaques on each of the first 10 steps of the route (and some more besides!) 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. Conscription resulted in very large armies in the First and Second World wars so many of us will be descendants of veterans. Perhaps the Armed Forces and MOD contains a concentration of people with an uneasy sense of unfinished family business? Might that connect with their career choices? There is a hereditary element at work in the Army and having a dad who served as a professional officer enhances career prospects and an early advantage of understanding Army culture is amplified in competitive promotion recommendations. General David Richards described the influence his Dad had on him in his memoirs. 1 Geographic approachIt was clearly very tough going, both physically and emotionally. “Not since my twenties have I had more highs and lows,” he has said of his walk. At German cemeteries of the First World War on the Western Front there are 3,000 grave markers with the Star of David.

These victories brought the German army to its knees and they were forced to sign the Armistice in November. Where too was the bounty of peace for the children, the women and the parents, like Douglas and Tom’s family, deprived forever more of those they most loved and needed? 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. Tom Thorpe [00:06:13] Which brings me to my next question. Why did you want to walk the way and why did you want to write a book about it?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.” Tom Thorpe [00:10:01] Now you describe a number of adventures on your walk. Could you tell us about some of them? Seldon’s book ends by reflecting on the tragedy of a world where history seems doomed to repeat itself: in this particular case, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. (Seldon’s own family hailed originally from that region: ‘One hundred years earlier my grandparents had fled west from near Kyiv in search of peace. Now their descendants beat the same path.’) As he concludes: