The Oak and the Laurel

Created by historian, Mark Connelly, and filmmaker, Ross Barnwell, The Oak & Laurel weaves archival material, poetry, and original words over arresting images of Thiepval memorial and the Somme landscape.

The Thiepval memorial is the pinnacle of Edwin Lutyens’s work for the IWGC. Unveiled in August 1932, it commemorates 73,337 British and South African missing of the Somme battlefields between February 1915 and March 1918. Visiting it is an awe-inspiring experience. It means accepting the embrace of its multiple, interlocking arches and progressing across a series of levels in which the names of the missing surround and enclose, while also revealing vistas of the battlefield beyond. Constantly amazed, constantly moved, constantly bewitched by this sublime piece of architecture, we decided to pay it homage in film. 

For us (say Mark and Ross), the intention was not tell a history of the memorial – that can be learnt from many excellent works – but to explore it as a poem in stone and brick, as a piece of music in architecture, as something that touches the intellect and the soul, as something that reminds us of the pain and misery of war, but through the wonder of its architecture inspires hope and a feeling of redemption. 

We invite you to explore the Thiepval memorial with us and feel its effect on the senses.