POEMS and anecdotes of the Boer War and a searing analysis of the causes of the First World War open Bridport’s 2013 Literary Festival on Remembrance Sunday, November 10.

With the centenary of the start of the Great War next year, local poet and historian James Crowden realised that it was important to look at the Boer War first.

In From Ladysmith to Archangel – The Language of War 1899 to 1902, he has put together a collection of poems, anecdotes and vignettes which charts the origins and progress of the long-forgotten war. Using contemporary sources, diaries, letters, newspaper reports and verbatim accounts to get a real feel for the war as it unfolded he has laid out the book as if it were poetry “to give the language a chance to breathe.”

He will be talking about the book at noon on Sunday at Sladers Yard in West Bay.

Mr Crowden said the Boer War was used as testing ground for weapons and tactics. “It paved the way for the First War in much the same way that the Spanish Civil war opened the gates for the Second War.”

“The Boer War became the first of the modern wars fought with modern weapons.

There were searchlights, radios, heliographs, pigeons, machine guns, barbed wire, trenches, war balloons, Mausers as well as long range artillery and high explosive.

“There were diamond mines, gold mines, towns under siege, set piece battles, snipers, nurses, disease and ‘concentration’ camps as well as a very hard fought guerrilla war.”

Journalist, author and military historian Max Hastings will be discussing Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War, his chronicle of the First World War at 3pm on Sunday at the Bull Hotel in Bridport.

Later in the festival on Tuesday, November 12, former BBC journalist Kate Adie will bring the war to the women left at home when she talks about her book Fighting on the Home Front at the Electric Palace at 2.30pm.

Some of the UK’s top novelists and big names in politics, television and journalism are descending on Bridport for the town’s ninth Literary Festival which runs until November 17.

Melvyn Bragg, Fay Weldon, Roy Hattersley, Peter Snow and Kathy Lette are among the well-known names who will be in town to talk about their books.

Former MP and cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken will be the guest speaker at the George Millar Literary Dinner at the Bull Hotel on November 12 .

The Kenneth Allsop Memorial Evening on November 15, entitled Fields, Rivers and Bees will be a celebration of the life of the noted broadcaster and champion of conservation who lived near Bridport until his death in 1973.

Full details of the festival are on bridlit.com or in the brochure.