Wipers Times on the BBC

Fol­low­ing Tim Hon­nor’s Adven­tures with an Arab Press, the BBC broad­cast  ‘Wipers Times’, a dra­ma writ­ten by Ian His­lop and Nick New­man, and star­ring Michael Palin, on BBC2 at 9pm on Wednes­day 11th September.

 

Accord­ing to the BBC web­site, ‘when Cap­tain Fred Roberts dis­cov­ered a print­ing press in the ruins of Ypres, Bel­gium in 1916, he decid­ed to pub­lish a satir­i­cal mag­a­zine called The Wipers Times — “Wipers” being army slang for Ypres. Full of gal­lows humour, The Wipers Times was poignant, sub­ver­sive and very fun­ny. Pro­duced lit­er­al­ly under ene­my fire and defy­ing both author­i­ty and gas attacks, the mag­a­zine proved a huge suc­cess with the troops on the west­ern front.’