BBC set to mark Remembrance Week 2017

Tony Hall, Director-General of the BBC, says: "Across TV, Radio and online we will be commemorating all the men and women of the armed forces who have served our country. We will be marking remembrance week with programming for all ages and bringing audiences stories from all across the UK."

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BBC News will carry coverage of the Remembrance Day parade and the ceremony at The Cenotaph, as well as linking up with events around the country including Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.

On Armistice Day, BBC News will cover the national Two Minute Silence at 11am, reflecting events around the UK on TV, radio and online.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and BBC Radio Scotland marks Armistice Day with stories reflecting the important place the Commission’s work holds in the nation’s heart, and leading up to the national silence.

On Remembrance Sunday, in New Every Sunday, there’ll be the Remembrance Sunday Service with Rev Sarah Murray of the Scottish Episcopal Cathedral Church of St Andrew’s, Inverness.

Sunday Morning with… Cathy Macdonald then looks at how music and poetry play a powerful role in remembrance, both national and personal, and explores the unique expression of loss found in the Gaelic tradition, with singers Margaret Bennett and Julie Fowlis.

We will explore the stories of Iraqi Jews, with Noorah Al-Gailani, a Sufi Muslim who curates Islamic Civilisations at Glasgow Museums. For hundreds of years Baghdad had a Jewish community that lived in harmony with their Muslim neighbours, but in the early 1950s most Iraqi Jews felts forced to uproot and move to Israel, leaving everything behind. Noorah reflects on her family roots in Baghdad and the contribution of the Jewish community there; on how her past influenced her own experience as a Muslim coming to the West, and how we can remember and mark loss caused by discord.

BBC Radio Wales will mark remembrance across general programmes and with a two minute silence on both Saturday 11 November and Armistice Sunday.

On BBC Radio Cymru, the weekly Llyfr Bob Wythnos will be Cerddi Rhyfel Twm Morys on Monday 6 November - Friday 10 November. There will also be a special programme on the Welsh spy Morgan Watkin - YsbÏwr Lloyd George on Monday 6 November.

Uffern o Le (Thursday 16 November) tells the experiences of Welsh people in the war, and the memories of their families. And in Edward Thomas – Milwr y Beirdd, on Thursday 23 November, poet Gwyneth Lewis introduces listeners to a Welsh poet who wrote in English, and was killed in the First World War.

BBC Radio Ulster will broadcast the 13th series of World War One At Home on the week leading up to Remembrance Sunday, with two special programmes on the theme of remembrance on the day at 10.15am and 11.45am (before and after the Cenotaph service).

BBC local and regional services

All BBC Local Radio stations will be observing the Two Minute Silence on Sunday 12 November at 11am.

In a special five-part documentary, Radio Lincolnshire tells the story of the Beechey family. The family’s eight brothers served in WW1 with five of them killed. They were one of three families in the UK to suffer such losses.

Now, journalist Michael Hortin travels in the brothers’ footsteps, through Belgium, France, Greece, Turkey, Tanzania and Australia, taking crosses crafted from Lincoln cathedral stone to where they are buried or commemorated. He will also explore the unique archive of letters the brothers sent home during the war.

A two-hour documentary on Remembrance Sunday will feature a service to install the final cross in the Beechey’s family church in the Lincolnshire village of Friesthorpe.

Our Sunday Breakfast presenter Sophie Law will be sharing the stories of The Brothers Of Deddington on November 11. Sophie is re-tracing the footsteps of two sets of brothers from a small local village who all lost their lives in the Battle of Passchendaele 100 years ago. She has travelled to the battlefields of Belgium with historian Jon Cooksey to hear how the Hancox and Chislett brothers lost their lives. From home soil to the battlefields we’re using show case storytelling to localise such a big event in history.

Passchendaele: Wiltshire’s Story
Sunday 12 November, 9am

BBC Wiltshire takes listeners on a journey from the training grounds of Salisbury Plain to the battlefields of Belgium as the station commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele. In conversation with descendants of those killed and using never heard before interviews with survivors, the station examines the impact the battle had on communities across the county as loved ones fought overseas.

We Will Remember Them
Sunday 12 November, noon

In a special concert recorded at Salisbury’s City Hall, Wiltshire’s championship-winning Woodfalls Band and renowned classical duo The Opera Babes come together to perform specially commissioned arrangements to remember the fallen.

To mark the Two Minute Silence at 11am on 11 November, CBeebies and CBBC will simulcast Poppies, an evocative, dialogue-free animation that sees war as experienced by animals in a WWI battlefield. The film, first broadcast in 2014, is set to a score composed by Oscar-winning Steve Price (Gravity) and recorded by the BBC Philharmonic.

CBeebies Radio presents Poppy’s Day read by Falklands War veteran, Simon Weston. Poppy finds out about why we wear poppies and watches a remembrance parade.

BBC Learning will host video resources and clips for use in the classroom for both primary and secondary pupils. A BBC Teach collections page will have a variety of resources for use in primary schools, including an audio story following one WW1 soldier’s diary with archive pictures, an assembly pack, and a collective worship programme. The A-Z Of WW1 will also be available on BBC Teach, a series of films explaining both how the war began, and facets of daily life during the conflict. For secondary school pupils, BBC Teach will host an assembly pack, poetry resources, and clips from a Jeremy Paxman series exploring how the nation reacted to the outbreak of war in 1914, key events from the conflict, and the attitude and expectations of both politicians and public.