Media — 29 October 2025
THE SOMME
STORY
A recorded historical talk
In this recorded talk, historian Tony Ferguson explores the story of the Battle of the Somme — not as a sequence of dates and casualty figures, but through the men whose names sit behind the statistics.
The talk begins with the summer of 1916 and the week-long bombardment that was supposed to make the attack a formality, then moves to the first of July and what actually happened along that front. It follows the 36th (Ulster) Division at Thiepval and the 16th (Irish) Division later in the year at Guillemont and Ginchy, and it asks what it meant that Irishmen of both traditions died within a few miles and a few weeks of one another — and how differently the two were remembered afterwards.
Throughout, the focus stays on individuals: the Tyrone men, the letters home, and the small human details that survive when the strategy has been forgotten. It is the same approach that runs through Andy Symington: Tyrone's Most Wanted Man — the conviction that a million dead is a statistic, and one dead man is a story.
The talk runs for around fifty minutes and is available to history societies, U3A, WI, Probus, libraries, retirement villages and community groups, either in person or online.