Pod Academy

It is a hundred years since the start of the first world war, and this Christmas marks the 100th anniversary of the Christmas Truce - the soldiers' truce - in that war. Our special Christmas podcast is introduced by Stephen Sedley, former Appeal Court Judge and Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law at Oxford University, who, nearly 50 years ago, recorded the interview with Frank Austin, which is at the heart of this podcast.  Frank was a 21 year old soldier when he took part in the 1914 Christmas Truce. Stephen Sedley:  Frank Austin was a Fleet Street compositor in the days when newspapers were set in hot metal.  He was born in 1893 and was still an apprentice when he signed up in 1914 without a second thought, after all, everyone knew the war would be over by Christmas.... In 1966, in his sitting room in Edgeware, Middlesex, I recorded some of Frank's memories of a conflict that, by pure good fortune, he survived - one of fewer than 30 known     survivors of an entire regiment. But on the first Christm