SALISBURY soldiers who died at the Battle of the Somme will be remembered to mark the centenary of the First World War offensive.

The names of the men from the city who died during the offensive in First World War will be ready out at midday tomorrow (Friday) at Salisbury Cathedral.

The long and bloody battle started on July 1, 1916 and lasted until November 1916, will also be remembered during a special Evensong at 5.30pm.

The choir will sing Henry Purcell's masterpiece Remember not, Lord, our offences.

On the following Fridays at midday, the names of the dead from other communities across Dorset and Wiltshire will also be remembered.

Information will also be available online commemorating those soldiers and whose original wooden grave markers are displayed in the Cathedral Cloister.

The British Army suffered about 60,000 casualties on the first day alone and over a million died or were wounded in the course of the entire offensive.

In all, 125,000 young men from across Britain and its Empire gave their lives to claim, at its maximum, just seven miles of ground. And a further 300,000 were wounded.

Commemorations will continue into the autumn with three lectures on the Somme at the cathedral and its repercussions then and now.

The first in the series, The Somme: Trying to make Sense of the Senseless, is on September 20 and will be given by Allan Mallinson, a former soldier, Times historian of the First World War, and author of Too Important for the Generals.

The second lecture, The Somme: Can it be justified? by Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford, author of In Defence of War, and an expert in the Christian tradition of 'just war' reasoning takes place on October 20.

And the third and final lecture is Shellshock versus Cowardice on the Somme: The Private Life of Harry Farr, by Professor Sir Simon Wessely.

Professor Wessely is chairman of psychological medicine at King’s College London, director of the King’s Centre for Military Health Research and president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Private Harry Farr was a British soldier executed on October 16, 1916 for alleged cowardice during the Battle of the Somme. He had a history of shellshock. After many years, Harry and all the others executed for military offences during the First World War, were granted posthumous pardons.

To book tickets for the lectures go to salisburycathedral.org.uk/event