BBC's First World War series: 'Paxman defies my low expectations' Refreshingly, however, the opening shot in the Corporation's campaign to cover the anniversary, the four-episode series Britain's Great War, presented by Jeremy Paxman, does not take that easy and clichéd option. Although from the doom-laden bongs of Big Ben counting out the seconds to the commencement of the war with Germany on August 4th 1914, we are left in no doubt of the scale of the coming tragedy, with Paxman's mournful features and lugubrious voice underscoring the message, the first episode, taken as a whole, is measured and reverent rather than sneering, towards those who fought and fell. The decimated old sweats were largely replaced by the "weekend soldiers" of the Territorial Army who held the line through 1915. Paxman, however, ignores the TA's role, preferring to concentrate on the volunteers - more than a million of them, joining up at the rate of 20,000 a day - who answered the call to arms made by Lord "Your country needs you" Kitchener, the stern soldier turned War Secretary whose pointing poster made big moustaches and big forefingers briefly fashionable. Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes is wheeled out as a big gun to pay tribute to Britain's militarist titan, presumably on the thin grounds that his wife is a distant descendant of the great man. But Kitchener hid a shrewd mind behind the "tache. He saw that the war, far from being all over by Christmas, would be a long one, and demanded "More men, and still more men." "K" approved the creation of the Pals" battalions - units composed of friends and colleagues from the same towns, factories, or professions, on the grounds that men who fought with their friends would stick together. He forgot that they would also die together, and on the first day of the Battle of the Somme - a month after "K" himself had drowned - they did just that: 20,000 perished and whole towns were bereaved. READ: First World War: love letters from the trenches Losing husbands, sons, fathers and brothers was not the only ordeal that women and children living along England's East Coast had to endure. For the first time in British history, civilians found themselves in the firing line when German warships bombarded Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby in December 1914. More than 150 died; Violet Muers, who died after the programme was made but was a child of seven at the time of the attacks, tells Paxman of the fear that gripped her household when the Germans were rumoured to have landed on the beach. Early the next year, there were more deaths when Zeppelins appeared over East Anglia. "In this war," Paxman reflects sombrely, "technology had made sure there would be no place of safety." Such unheard-of attacks made it easier for an outraged public to believe stories of Hunnish barbarities in Belgium, and the government eagerly used tales of bayonetted babies and crucified civilians to boost its recruiting drive. I had expected the BBC to pour scorn on such propaganda, in the interest of not offending today's Germany. Once more, however, Paxman defied my low expectations by saying that the Germans burned priceless libraries and massacred civilians in cold blood. The trauma went a long way towards uniting the nation in backing the war. But as they contemplated the abyss they were stepping into, prime minister Asquith and his Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey both broke down in uncontrollable tears. "Whatever happened," demanded Paxman "to that famous British stiff upper lip?" I think he knows. Nigel Jones's Peace and War: Britain in 1914 is published this month by Head of Zeus Britain's Great War airs tonight on BBC One at 9.00pm