In November 1981 Stantonbury Campus Drama Group performed a brand new musical documentary play called Days of Pride. It told the story of the First World War as it affected the inhabitants of Wolverton and New Bradwell in Buckinghamshire. I had done the research for the play, reading newspapers and other documents and interviewing those who were alive at the time, including former soldiers as well as those who had stayed at home.

Among those people I interviewed was the remarkable Hawtin Mundy. His fifteen hours of memories from joining up in 1914 , 'three times wounded, 20 months a prisoner of war' until demob in 1919 provided the central character for the play that Roy Nevitt and I created from those primary source materials. Our partnership led three years later in 1984 to the foundation of the Living Archive.

After the play had been performed I used the same primary source material to create a series of 5 half-hour documentaries that were broadcast on Community Radio Milton Keynes. Those scripts form the basis of this website.

I hope that you enjoy this site.

Roger Kitchen

LINKS

If you want to read Hawtin Mundy's full account of his experiences during the First World War his book No Heroes No Cowards is still available from the Living Archive. They also sell his book of childhood memories I'll Tell You What Happened...

If you are interested inanother person from Wolverton who took part in the First World War, then read the letters of Albert French, a young man who ran away to join up in October 1915. His letters have inspired a book, play and a Radio 4 documentary. The Site is also recommended on the Battlefields of the Great War 1914-1918 site

Other good resources about the First World War include:
The Western Front Association
The Long Long Trail, the story of the British Army in the Great War of 1914-1918