The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way

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A timely, eloquent and convincing reminder that to forget the carnage of the past is to open the door to it happening again.' George Alagiah The book comprises many themes: there is the walk itself, the war, the unknown warriors in need of a champion, the charity too needing a champion, and the author’s own thirst for a drink and medical attention for his blisters. And swirling through this mix is the grief which Seldon feels after the loss of his wife.

The book is testament to the author’s talent as a story-teller. Therefore the book is also a “good read”. Drawing again on his deep knowledge the author enriches the story of the Western Front with the personal fate of participants in the fights; not very much new there (e.g. Churchill’s short sojourn on the front, the Kipling-son saga), but giving a lot of colour. Anthony Seldon’s books on British politics, his surveys of premierships, are well-known to students of contemporary Britain. His most recent book is of a different mettle, as its title intimates. Having accomplished my own pilgrimage to the battlegrounds where my grandfather fought in 1917 and 1918 - on the centenary of the Battle of Amiens in August 2018 and again in September 2022, when we presented a map he had kept of the battle at Bullecourt (Pas de Calais) to the small museum in the village there ( recounted on my blog ) - I was interested to read of Anthony Seldon’s much longer trip, published this autumn. It was a journey of exploration and discovery, but also, importantly, a pilgrimage. “It was a pilgrimage, because it was about honouring that one soldier. . . I was doing something for Gillespie that he couldn’t do himself,” he says now. Fittingly, Gillespie carried a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress with him. This is the world’s biggest commemorative project,” he says. There is interest in Germany, and he would love to see if it is possible to extend the route from Canterbury Cathedral to Freiburg. “That would be an extension to join two of the greatest Christian centres in Northern Europe.”Seldon was enacting an old idea. Douglas Gillespie, the younger of two brothers killed in the war, had wrote to his parents that after the war there should be a path where No Man’s Land had been, ‘with paths for pilgrims on foot, and plant trees for shade, and fruit trees, so the soil should not be altogether waste. Then I would like to send every man and child in Western Europe on pilgrimage along that Via Sacra, so that they might think and learn what war means from the silent witnesses on either side’ (p.5). It was a striking and visionary idea and it captivated Seldon when he read the letter. The idea was initially proposed in 1915 by a New College Old Member while serving in WWI. 2nd Lieutenant Alexander Douglas Gillespie of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders wrote a letter home from the front line to tell of his vision of ‘a via sacra’ (a sacred road), a route for peace between the lines; IT IS also an intensely personal story. Sir Anthony travelled to the very spot where his grandfather Wilfred Willett was shot in the head. Willett survived, but was seriously injured, and had to give up his hopes of becoming a doctor, something that had a ricochet effect down the generations. Tom Thorpe [00:06:13] Which brings me to my next question. Why did you want to walk the way and why did you want to write a book about it? Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe’s most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres. Along the way, he wrestled heat exhaustion, dog bites and blisters as well as a deeper search for inner peace and renewed purpose. Touching on grief, loss and the legacy of war, The Path of Peace is the extraordinary story of Anthony’s epic walk, an unforgettable act of remembrance and a triumphant rediscovery of what matters most in life.

The route of his 1,000 kilometre journey was inspired by a young British soldier of the First World War, Alexander Douglas Gillespie, who dreamed of creating a ‘Via Sacra’ that the men, women and children of Europe could walk to honour the fallen. Anthony Seldon is no disinterested writer. Convinced that Douglas Gillespie’s dream was “the best idea that emerged from the war”, he set up a charity to create the Western Front Way – no simple task given that very little of the lines of the trenches remain and that much of the countryside destroyed by wars is now grassed over, planted with trees, or restored to working farmland. This book is his account of his own journey on foot along the route of the Western Front Way, from Vosges Mountains (Kilometer Zero) to the Channel, a total of 1,000 kilometers which he accomplished in 35 days in August/September 2021. This walk is best described as a journey. By continuing along its path, Seldon provides a rod that keeps this book from falling into a depressing litany of grief, blisters, thirst, dog and insect bites, angry motorists, and loneliness. Through fortitude and a little humour, Seldon keeps the reader upbeat; in one case, including an amusing interaction with a homeless Frenchman. It is encouraging, too, to read of individuals who showed kindness to Seldon on his way. After all, the walk was undertaken during the pandemic. You could forgive people for being wary of a stranger. A DECADE ago, the historian and former head teacher Sir Anthony Seldon was researching a book on the First World War and its impact on public schools. About one fifth of the public schoolboys who fought in the war died, and it had a devastating impact on the survivors. And yet Seldon had been on that path for years before he read the letter. Finally, he stands on the spot where his grandfather had been shot in the head and mused how as a survivor, the trauma, foreboding and anxiety had passed to his Mum and then to him. ‘I inherited these debilitating personality traits, and have never been able to transcend them. If only I could, 107 years later… leave them here, right here in these woods’ (p.257). That connection with the past and what it means in the present makes this a great book.

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Douglas Gillespie was killed in September 2015, in the opening hours of the Battle of Loos. His body was never recovered. His devastated parents published some of the letters they had received from both sons in a volume, Letters from Flanders, which brought the proposal of a Via Sacra to public notice. The concept attracted some interest — The Spectator described his “great Memorial Road idea” as a “brilliant suggestion” — but it was never taken up. The whole thing is hung on a letter written by a young British Second Lieutenant from the trenches in Northern France in 1915, shortly before he was killed. Douglas Gillespie, somewhat oddly writing to his old school headmaster, expresses a wish that 'when peace comes, our government might combine with the French government to make one long Avenue between the lines from the Vosges to the sea...' - this would be a 'Via Sacra' which would provide a pilgrimage route to enable the inhabitants of Western Europe to 'think and learn what war means.' Inspired by this, our author Anthony Seldon, who had recently lost his wife and reached a turning point in his career, set up a charity (which would close in 2022 to be replaced by a commercial venture) to work towards an end-to-end 1,000 kilometre 'hike and bike' trail called the Western Front Way. Seldon's walk, at the centre of this book, was in part a means of raising publicity for the venture.

A deeply informed meditation on the First World War, an exploration of walking's healing power, a formidable physical achievement... and above all a moving enactment of a modern pilgrimage.' Rory StewartAlthough it would be another three years before the war was over, Douglas Gillespie had a vision for the future. “I wish that when peace comes, our government might combine with the French government to make one long Avenue between the lines from the Vosges to the sea,” he wrote. There was this huge Western Front, all the way down into Switzerland, through Alsace and Lorraine. And the war ripped the soul and confidence out of the French people.”

I for one am happy to devote the rest of my life to seeing Gillespie’s magnificent roaring dream become a reality,” he ends the book, before quoting from Matthew 5.9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”Seldon’s book ends by reflecting on the tragedy of a world where history seems doomed to repeat itself: in this particular case, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. (Seldon’s own family hailed originally from that region: ‘One hundred years earlier my grandparents had fled west from near Kyiv in search of peace. Now their descendants beat the same path.’) As he concludes: Antony Seldon is a prolific author and The Path for Peace may well be his best and most enduring book. It was not just the writing. The Path for Peace documents 1000 kms, over some 40 days, in which Seldon walked along the length of the western front (as first the Germans and eventually everyone, called it) and he was at the estuary town of Nieuwpoort and looking at the North Sea. More than a long walk, it had been a pilgrimage and a search for meaning. A deeplyinformed meditation on the First World War, an exploration of walking’s healing power, a formidable physical achievement…and above all a moving enactment of a modern pilgrimage’ – Rory Stewart