Porty People and Places

"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time",
Attributed to Sir Edward Gray - British Foreign Secretary - August 3rd 1914.

This poster stands out from the forest of Fringe Posters that have proliferated across the City as the spotlight moves from Glasgow 2014 to Edinburgh's International Festival and Fringe which continues here for a funfilled month.

This play, adapted from a brilliant book by Michael Morpurgo seems an appropriate blip subject with which to mark today's centenary. Michael visited our school in Gloucestershire on a number of occasions and one of the many amazing things he told us all, was his quest to find a soldier's name to be the subject of this story. He stumbled across this grave in a military cemetery in France. His search was over and with family permission turned this into a living literary memorial for subsequent generations of children .... lest we ever forget.

Global events 100 years on, do not encourage me to feel that our leaders are really remembering that the peaceful approach is always ultimately what we all want - Jaw Jaw never War War.

[Our School's production of Private Peaceful, brilliant directed by JD would have been more than worthy of a Fringe Production too.]