Programme Note
This is a work for chorus and orchestra, setting Andrew Motion’s poetry, 'The Last Fighting Tommy' to music. At the time of composition,Harry Patch was 110, the second oldest person in Britain and the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War. ‘The Five Acts of Harry Patch’ tells the story of his life, from his early childhood in Somerset
through to his experiences during two World Wars and his later years in a care home in
Somerset, England.
Harry Patch died in 2009 at the age of 111.