Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty
Song by Florrie Forde
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"Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty" is a music hall song written by Arthur J. Mills, Fred Godfrey and Bennett Scott in 1916. It was popular during the First World War, and tells a story of three fictional soldiers on the Western Front suffering from homesickness and their longing to return to "Blighty" — a slang term for Britain.
| "Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Florrie Forde | |
| Published | 1916 |
| Songwriters | |
| Official audio | |
| "Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty" on YouTube | |
Composition
Fred Godfrey wrote the song with Bennett Scott and A.J. Mills after passing a music hall in Oxford where a show called Blighty was showing. He recounts: "One of us suddenly said “What an idea for a song!” Four hours later it was all finished, and the whole country was singing it soon afterwards. I got — not very much."[1][2]
The chorus lyric "Take me back to dear old Blighty/Put me on the train for London town" was included in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Recordings
Recordings by Florrie Forde[3] and Ella Retford are the most commonly heard versions, though Dorothy Ward recorded it first in 1916.[citation needed]
British singer Kevin Coyne recorded the song on his 1978 album Dynamite Daze, with piano accompaniment by Tim Rice.[4][5]
Use in other media
A recording of the song by Cicely Courtneidge from the 1962 film The L-Shaped Room was sampled at the beginning of the title track of the album The Queen Is Dead by the Smiths.[6]
A version called "Bring it Back to Blighty", with different lyrics, was recorded as the England song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.[7]