First World War

Following the well-publicised return to Britain of the remains of a few dozen soldiers killed during the early stages of the First World War, the British government outlawed the practice. One of the most high-profile of the returnees had been Lieutenant William Gladstone MP, grandson of the eminent Victorian Prime Minister and Lord Lieutenant of Flintshire.

As only the wealthy and well-connected could afford the time and resources to arrange for the removal of their loved one’s corpse, it was considered bad for morale on the home front to see a handful of families able to mourn at a dead soldier’s grave, whilst for the majority their son or husband would forever lie, as the poet soldier Rupert Brooke put it, in `some corner of a foreign field / That is forever England’.