Basingstoke Festival of Choirs

A Century of War and Peace

The Anvil 

Choirs involved: Basing Singers, Basingstoke Choral Society, Basingstoke Hospital Male Voice Choir, Basingstoke Hospital Ladies Choir, Basingstoke Male Voice Choir, Basingstoke Ladies’ Choir, Belles of St Martin’s Choir, Hurst Singers, Ooh Mama, Overton Choral Society, Steventon Singers, Tadley Singers.   

IT was returns only for this Anvil concert, and the venue certainly looked the part for the occasion.

Poppies, flags and wreaths decorated the performance space where hundreds of members of Basingstoke Festival of Choirs and Neil Streeter’s Heritage Light Orchestra were gathered to mark the outbreak of World War One’s centenary year.

The men of the choirs were on the ground floor, garlanded on the upper level by the ladies, and it was possible to tell who was from which choir, thanks to their dress (and a wide range of colourful scarves). 

The programme was a well-chosen blend of music, including film soundtracks, marching songs, war songs and choral music, beginning – after the noise of war was heard through the speakers - with the dramatic Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem.

Various conductors, including BLC’s Margaret Brackenborough and Paul Timms from Overton Choral Society, took turns at the podium throughout.

The Festival of Choirs’ chairman Dai Ogborn led a very popular sing-along of four war songs, encouraging the audience to join in. They did a fantastic job combining Pack Up Your Troubles and It’s A Long Way to Tipperary!  

Other highlights were a wonderful rendition of Let There Be Peace On Earth and the popular Military Wives’ number Wherever You Are, which featured a solo from well-known local performer Theresa Lunn. I noticed that it drew a few tears from those listening. 

I also loved Albert Saffroni’s traditional marching tune Imperial Echoes but would have preferred a more impassioned delivery of Les Miserables’ call to arms Do You Hear the People Sing. 

Linking the numbers pertinently throughout the night was the familiar face of Guy Slater, who founded the Horseshoe Theatre Company, based in The Haymarket theatre in the town in 1974, and addressed the audience from a beautifully decorated podium.

“I am honoured to have been asked to play a small part in tonight’s concert,” Guy remarked. “I’m very confident you’re in for a treat.”

Guy told the story of his discovery of nine large handwritten volumes of a diary which had been written by a family member. He’d edited them into the book My Warrior Sons – The Borton Family Diary 1914-18, which was printed in 1973, just before he came to Basingstoke.

It’s now, sadly, out of print. This seems a terrible shame as everyone who listened to the variously insightful, amusing, and poignant selections was so impressed by them. I can imagine that many of the audience members will have thought, ‘that’s a book I’d like to read’ and will then have discovered that they were unable to get their hands on the tome.

The final number may have been World in Union, but, as Guy’s final reading so poignantly reminded us, the fragile peace of 1918 lasted just 21 years. 

A retiring collection was taken by members of armed forces raising money for Care for Casualties, which looks after the families and the families of the bereaved from the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. Find out more online at careforcasualties.org.uk.