<p>At the end of the First World War more than 192,000 wives had lost their husbands, and nearly 400,000 children had lost their fathers. A further half a million children had lost one or more siblings. Appallingly, one in eight wives died within a year of receiving news of their husband's death. Few people remained unscathed and the effects of the conflict are still with us. The Quick and the Dead will pay tribute to the families who were left to suffer at home while their husband, fathers and sons went off to fight, and the generations that followed. Through the stories in this groundbreaking history, we realise not just what became of our grandfathers but how their experiences influenced the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of a generation that they left at home. Against all the odds some stories ended happily - missing fathers did return, men thought to be dead returned from prisoner of war camps to a joyous reunion. For others the loss, while difficult to bear at the time, gave them an independence, drive and ambition that ensured that their lives were successful and a fitting tribute to those who died. Very few people know that only the first minute's silence on Armistice Day is in memory of the dead of the Great War and all the subsequent wars. The second minute is for the living, the survivors of the war, and the wives and the children they left behind. Through a unique collection of over fifty interviews, private diaries and a remarkable collection of unpublished letters written by the soldiers to their families back home, The Quick and the Dead is a history of those who are commonly forgotten and neglected when the fallen are remembered on Armistice Day.</p>

The Quick and the Dead: Fallen Soldiers and Their Families in the Great War

History

RICHARD VAN EMDEN

Military

Bloomsbury UK

All Quiet on the Home Front

Literature & Fiction

Steve Humphries

Contemporary

Magna Large Print Books

<p>Jack Martin was a thirty-two-year-old clerk at the Admiralty when he was called up to serve in the army in September 1916. These diaries, written in secret, hidden from his colleagues and only discovered by his family after his return home, present the Great War with heartbreaking clarity, written in a voice as compelling and distinctive as Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon and all the more extraordinary given that it is not an officer's but that of a private. From his arrival in France and his participation in the Somme, through offensives at Ypres and eventual demobilisation after the Armistice, we see wartime life as it really was for the ordinary Tommy. In these journals, introduced and edited by bestselling "First World War" historian Richard van Emden, we witness the cheerful Albert Martin getting to grips with life in the trenches and, together with his comrades in the Royal Engineers, confronting the ever-present threat of injury and death. We also see the mundane reality of life at the front line - the arguments with superiors, the joy brought by the arrival of packages from loved ones at home and the appalling conditions in which that attritional war was fought.</p>

Sapper Martin: The Secret Great War Diary of Jack Martin

Bloomsbury Paperbacks

The Last Fighting Tommy (Memorial Edition): The Life of Harry Patch, Last Veteran of the Trenches, 1898-2009 (WH Smith Exclusive Edition)

Harry Patch

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

The youngest soldier who fought in the Great War is believed to have been just 12 years old. Many thousands of other boys are known to have faked eye tests, inflated their small chests and stood on tiptoes to bluff their way into a war of unforeseen horror. How and why so many under-aged boys were able to get to the battlefields is a complex mystery of World War I, and until Richard van Emden's classic account, largely unexplored. Boy Soldiers of the Great War tells for the first time the incredible stories of the boys who went to fight for their country. Richard van Emden, having amassed a unique collection of personal testimonies and hitherto unpublished diaries and letters, brings to life their stories of heroism and sacrifice. This edition has been completely revised and updated.

Boy Soldiers of the Great War

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

Famous tells the Great War stories of twenty of Britain's most respected, best known and even notorious celebrities. They include politicians, actors, writers, an explorer, a sculptor and even a murderer. The generation that grew up in the late 19th century enlisted enthusiastically in the defense of the country. Many would become household names such as Basil Rathbone, the definitive Sherlock Holmes, A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh, and John Laurie and Arnold Ridley who found fame and public affection as the dour Scotsman Fraser, and the gentle and genial Godfrey, in Dad's Army. From politicians such as Harold Macmillan and Winston Churchill to writers including J.B. Priestley, and J.R.R. Tolkein, from sculptors like Henry Moore, to composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, their fame and influence continue even into the 21st Century. The authors Richard van Emden and Vic Piuk have discovered the exact locations where these celebrities saw action. They tell the story of how J.R.R. Tolkein led his men over the top on the Somme, where CS Lewis was wounded and invalided home, and how Basil Rathbone won the Military Cross for a trench raid (while dressed as a tree). Each story will be examined in detail with pictures taken of the very spot where the actions took place. There are maps of the area that will guide enterprising readers to walk in the footsteps of their heroes.

Famous 1914-1918

Biographies & Memoirs

Victor Piuk

Community & Culture

Pen and Sword Military

Last Fighting Tommy Signed Copy

Bloomsbury Publishing

Britain's Last Tommie's

Pen & Sword Select

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