01 On The Idle Hill Of Summer

The World Crisis & the Greatest War 1914-1918 [documentary] Profiles of the five European powers engaged at war’s start: German Empire, French Third Republic, United Kingdom, Russian Empire, and Austria-Hungary. The Balkan Wars and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The series title sequence used a rostrum camera to create montage of three images; the first showing a British soldier standing over the grave of a comrade, the second showing a uniformed, skeletal corpse by the entrance to a dugout and the last showing a seated British soldier looking directly into camera. The image of the staring soldier, taken from photograph Q 1 in the Imperial War Museum photograph archive, has been described as having quickly become symbolic of the First World War.[3][nb 1] This title sequence was set against the series’ theme music, composed by Wilfred Josephs and performed by the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra.