Radiohead release “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” for the British Legion

Radiohead's “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” was played for the first time on BBC Radio 4's Today programme at five to nine this morning, and went on sale the same morning as a download from the band's website. John Harris, writing in The Guardian the next day, could not remember Today ever playing a whole song by a rock group before.

The song costs a fixed £1, and all the money goes to the Royal British Legion. Harry Patch, the last British survivor of the First World War trenches, died on 25 July aged 111; his funeral is at Wells Cathedral tomorrow.

Patch kept quiet about the war for some 80 years after fighting at Passchendaele in 1917, and first spoke about it for a BBC documentary in 1998. Thom Yorke heard him on Today in 2005. In a post on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, he writes that the interview was very emotional and that the way Patch talked about war had a profound effect on him.

The band recorded the song live in an abbey, only a few weeks before Patch died. Jonny Greenwood arranged the strings. There is no rock band on it, just Yorke's voice and the strings, for about five and a half minutes. The lyric is eight lines from the trenches and borrows Patch's words at least twice, ending on his warning from that 2005 interview that the next war would be chemical.

It would be very easy for our generation to forget the true horror of war, without the likes of Harry to remind us. I hope we do not forget.

Thom Yorke¹⁵

He dedicates the song to peace and understanding, and quotes Patch's own words. Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims¹⁵