From Berkhamsted to Beyond: The role and contribution of the Inns of Court Officers Training Corps during the Great War
Speaker: Clive Harris
Thursday, 20th July 2023
6.45 p.m. (to be preceded by the Annual Meeting at 6.15 p.m.)
Harvard Lecture Theatre (MAR.1.10), The Marshall Building, 44 Lincoln’s Inn Fields WC2A 3LY (by kind permission of The London School of Economics and Political Science)
Admission free and open to all but please click here to register in advance through Eventbrite
In August 1914, just 268 men made up one squadron of cavalry and three companies of infantry known as the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps. By the time of the Armistice, this key resource, which supplied officers to a rapidly expanding British Army, had witnessed almost 14,000 men passing through its ranks. Those men earnt over 2,800 bravery decorations, including 3 Victoria Crosses, with roughly half (7,100) becoming casualties and over 2,000 losing their life in the conflict. From the Western Front to Palestine, the men of the Inns of Court OTC led the British Army to ultimate victory in November 1918. This is their story.
Clive Harris served in the Royal Signals and with Hertfordshire Constabulary before embarking on a career in military history in 1998. He first visited the battlefields as a child with his grandfather and was regularly exploring the Western Front by the late 1980s. In addition to writing Walking the London Blitz, Wander through Wartime London and The Greater Game, he has contributed to numerous written publications and television programmes including Time Team, Time Watch and the BBC Centenary coverage of Gallipoli 100.
His specialist battlefield subjects are the Gallipoli Campaign and the Retreat of 1914 and 1918. The London Blitz and the Italian Campaign during the Second World War are also areas of specific interest. Clive is the holder of badge number 33 in the Guild of Battlefield Guides and was elected to the British Commission for Military History in 2010.
Clive completed his Master’s degree in Great War Studies at Wolverhampton and in 2021 was the Douglas Haig Fellow. He is a proud Freeman of the City of London, a member of the Goldsmiths’ Livery Company and is currently researching a PhD on how the emergence of football impacted on the British Army, 1900-1919.
His favourite battlefield to visit remains Gallipoli. When not guiding, writing or lecturing, he can be found following his passions of Charlton Athletic, soul music and mudlarking along the Thames.
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