HOT WEEKEND: We Have Ways Fest 2023

An impressive mix of World War Two history and hardware drew the largest audience yet to the third We Have Ways Fest, including Phil Loder

James Holland and Al Murray arrive on Day 1 in ‘Gertie’, the We Have Ways Loyd Carrier

James Holland introduces Richard Aldred, a veteran who drove a Cromwell tank with the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards in north-west Europe

BAuxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) re-enactors demonstrate loading and aiming drills on a light anti-aircraft gun

Al Murray and James Holland wished for the sun to shine on this year’s We Have Ways Fest and they were not disappointed. A blistering weekend in mid-September saw the ‘Afflicted’ – those who keep returning to the events of World War Two – come together in rural Buckinghamshire for the third year of the live incarnation of the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast. The broad theme of the festival was 1943, given that 2023 marks the 80th anniversary. Three speaker stages were busy all weekend with historians, experts, interviewers and veterans taking their audiences from Italy to Stalingrad, the Battle of the Atlantic to Guadalcanal, and Hamburg to Burma, to name but a few. Topics ranged from military map-making to the Special Operations Executive, and the Green Howards in Italy to flying stress in Bomber Command.