The Angels of Mons and Other Wartime Legends - Monday, September 13 at 7:30PM

The Angels of Mons and Other Wartime Legends

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The Angels of Mons were once described by the eminent historian A.J.P. Taylor as "the greatest wartime mystery of the 20th century." Two weeks after the outbreak of the First World War a force of 30,000 crack British troops became trapped and surrounded in the Belgian town of Mons by a massive German Army three times as strong. But at the very moment they expected to be annihilated the German attack was suddenly halted, allowing the British force to escape to fight another day.

On the Home Front the escape of the British Expeditionary Force was proclaimed as “a miracle” by patriotic newspapers whose readers believed the Germans had been stopped not by armed force but by supernatural forces - angels and phantom bowmen led by the English patron saint, St George. During the remainder of the war soldiers and nurses came forward to claim they had personally witnessed the miracle at Mons. The legend captured the imagination of thousands across the world, brought hope to those who had lost loved ones on the Western Front and was resurrected again to inspire a new generation following the retreat from Dunkirk in 1940.

But was the story it fact or fiction? For his 2004 book The Angels of Mons, David set out to discover the truth using contemporary documents from the Great War along with original accounts left by soldiers and the Red Cross nurses. For this talk he will answer this question: did the legend have any basis in reality, or was it, as Radio 4 claim, 'the first urban myth.'?

Dr David Clarke is a senior lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University. Before he entered academia he spent 15 years working for newspapers and as a public relations officer for local government. He has a Ph.D in English Cultural Tradition and Folklore and has been researching and writing skeptically about 'strange phenomena' and UFOs for as long as he can remember. David writes a skpetical column on UFOs, with Andy Roberts, for The Fortean Times and is a member of the editorial board for The Skeptic magazine.

He has contributed to a range of TV and radio programmes on UFOs including BBC Timewatch Britain’s X-Files and the recent Channel Five series Britain’s Closest Encounters. He used Freedom of Information to persuade the Ministry of Defence to release their so-called "X-files" and since 2008 he has been acting as consultant to The National Archives for the public release of their UFO records. His books include a re-examination of the First World War legend The Angel of Mons and most recently, The UFO Files.