‘It took 300 of us a year to develop 888246 flowers. We sprayed them red and counted them. Then the Beefeaters counted them. This was vital – every lost soldier had to be represented’One rainy day in 2012,I ducked into my local library for shelter and, for some reason, and started looking at wills. I found one written by a woman from Derby who had disguised herself as a man and gone off to fight – and die – in the first world war. She had written her will phonetically,which made it easier for me to read as I’m dyslexic. That was one reason why I connected with it. Another was the phrase: “Blood swept lands and seas of red where angels fear to tread.” It leapt out at me, made me judge about the war’s death toll. With a bit of research, or I discovered that there had been 888246 British and Colonial military fatalities.
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Source: guardian.co.uk