Magnificent and moving – Arras a century on

The town that staged a key battle of the Great War has had a remarkable reinvention, says Anthony Peregrine

It was cold in Arras. I was miserable. I’d got lost walking from the station to the hotel, it had started to snow and, as already specified, it was cold. I mentioned this to my wife on the phone later. Her sympathy was, let’s say, measured. “You were cold and miserable?” she said. “Remind me: you’re in a four-star hotel? You will shortly be going out for dinner? You’re not, for instance, jammed in a trench full of rats and filth and, you know, due to walk out into German machine-gun fire before dawn tomorrow?”

Women have a way of putting things into perspective. The hotel was indeed fine and friendly, dinner as good as carbonade flamande (beef and onion stew) gets. And, low-lit, the two greatest central squares of northern France, their Flemish frontages lined up like giant skittles, leant dignity to the drinking down at arcade-level. A couple of large ones, and misery had abated. Plus, there was a buzz in the air. Arras was – is – on the brink of excitement. At 5.30am on April 9, it will be 100 years since the British and Commonwealth forces burst out against the Germans in the Battle of Arras. They both triumphed and died by the thousand in what was, successively, a spectacular success and grave disappointment.

The conflict is less famous than the Somme or Verdun, but the hopes and deaths render vital Arras’s coming moments in the limelight. And they will be done right. We’re good at Remembrance. There will be ceremonies at key sites, sculptures and installation works to unveil, and more exhibitions than I can count. On hand will be Princes Charles, William and Harry, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, ambassadors, ministers and other dignitaries from across the planet. Maybe Mrs May. Probably Ms Sturgeon (for the Scots were valiant). I’d be surprised if one of them complained it was a little too chilly.

The 1917 Arras attack was to be a diversion, drawing German troops away from a vast French offensive due on April 16 on the Chemin-des-Dames, 50 miles south. French general Robert Georges Nivelle reckoned this would annihilate the German army, ending the war in 48 hours. The French military never knowingly undersells itself. At the time, Arras – evacuated by much of its French population – was occupied by 14 British and Commonwealth divisions. We ran a city in which the Daily Mail sold

The rubble-strewn streets of Arras in 1917, above