Book Reviews – First World War

This is my main book reviews page for books about the First World War:

20.12.2022 Chasing the Great Retreat: The German Cavalry Pursuit of the British Expeditionary Force before the Battle of the Marne August 1914 – Joe Robinson, Sabine Declercq & Randal Gilbert

24.09.2022 From the Channel to the Ypres Salient: The Belgian Sector 1914-1918 – Chris Baker

22.07.2022 Hertfordshire Soldiers of the Great War – Paul Johnson & Dan Hill

29.05.2022 Boy Soldiers of the Great War – Richard Van Emden

18.01.2022 Badges of the Regular Infantry 1914-1918 – David Bilton

23.12.2021 Studentenfriedhof to Soldatenfriedhof: A History of Langemark German Cemetery and Self-Guided Tour – Roger Steward

30.10.2021 For Every Sailor Afloat, Every Soldier at the Front: Princess Mary’s Christmas Gift, 1914 – Peter Doyle

04.07.2021 Tracing Your First World War Ancestors – Simon Fowler

30.05.2021 A Moonlight Massacre: The Night Operation on the Passchendaele Ridge 2 December 1917 – Michael LoCicero

06.03.2021 A Passionate Prodigality – Guy Chapman

05.02.2021 Twelve Days on the Somme – Sidney Rogerson

03.01.2021 A Nation In Arms: The British Army in the First World War – Ian Beckett & Keith Simpson (eds.)

24.12.2020 In Which They Served: The Stories of the Great War As Told By Their Medals – Richard Cullen

04.12.2020 The Frontline Walk – Steve Roberts & Terry Whenham (eds.)

17.10.2020 Walking Gallipoli – Stephen Chambers

28.06.2020 Underground Warfare 1914-1918 – Simon Jones

26.05.2020 A Visitor’s Guide: The Battles of Arras North – Jon Cooksey & Jerry Murland

19.04.2020 With Valour and Distinction: The Actions of the 2nd Battalion Leicestershire Regiment 1914-1918 – Nigel Atter

18.03.2020 From the Ashes: Reconstruction of Flanders Fields after the Great War – Various

27.02.2020 Missing: The Need for Closure after the Great War – Richard Van Emden

08.01.2020 The Battles of Arras: South – Jon Cooksey & Jerry Murland

29.08.2019 Lionel Morris & the Red Baron: Air War on the Somme – Jill Bush

04.08.2019 Marjorie’s War: Four Families in the Great War 1914-1918 – Reginald and Charles Fair

21.06.2019 British Battle Tanks: World War I to 1939 – David Fletcher

21.05.2019 Walking in the Footsteps of the Fallen: Verdun 1916 – Christina Holstein

12.04.2019 The Badges of Kitchener’s Army – David Bilton

26.03.2019 The 51st (Highland) Division in the Great War: Engine of Destruction – Colin Campbell

14.02.2019 Ypres 1914: The Menin Road – Nigel Cave & Jack Sheldon

18.01.2019 Leeds Rifles: The Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire Regiment) 7th & 8th Territorial Battalions 1914-1918 – Andrew Kirk

24.12.2018 1918: The Decisive Year in Soldiers’ Own Words and Photographs – Richard van Emden

26.11.2018 The Kaiser’s Dawn: The Untold Story of Britain’s Secret Mission to Murder the Kaiser in 1918 – John Hughes-Wilson

23.10.2018 In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign – Leon Wolff

21.08.2018 Hamel 4th July 1918: The Australian & American Triumph – John Hughes-Wilson

31.05.2018 Death of a Division – David Martin

26.04.2018 The Man Who Saved Paris: Roger West’s Ride 1914 – Michael Carragher

03.04.2018 High Wood – Michael Harrison

21.02.2018 The Somme 1916: Touring the French Sector – David O’Mara

08.02.2018 Victoria Crosses on the Western Front: Third Ypres 1917 31st July 1917-6th November 1917  – Paul Oldfield

29.01.2018 In the Shadow of Bois Hugo: The 8th Lincolns at the Battle of Loos – Nigel Atter

12.12.2017 Walking Ypres – Paul Reed

16.11.2017 Photographing the Fallen: A War Graves Photographer on the Western Front 1915-1919 – Jeremy Gordon-Smith

03.11.2017 Disputed Earth: Geology & Trench Warfare on the Western Front 1914-18 – Peter Doyle

29.09.2017 Captured Germans: British POW Camps in the First World War – Norman Nicol

22.09.2017 Epitaphs of the Great War: Passchendaele – Sarah Wearne

06.09.2017 The Western Front: Battlefields, Memorials & Cemeteries of the First World War – Marcel Belley

01.08.2017 Fighting the Somme – Jack Sheldon

30.05.2017 Canada’s Dream Shall Be of Them: Canadian Epitaphs of the Great War – Eric McGeer & Steve Douglas

22.05.2017 Doctors in the Great War – Ian Whitehead

30.04.2017 Military Technology of the First World War – Wolfgang Fleischer

27.03.2017 Digging the Trenches: The Archaeology of the Western Front – Andrew Robertshaw & David Kenyon

09.03.2017 They Didn’t Want to Die Virgins: Sex & Morale in the British Army on the Western Front 1914-18 – Bruce Cherry

24.02.2017 Soldier From the Wars Returning – Charles Carrington

30.01.2017 Cambridgeshire Kitcheners: A History of 11th (Service) Battalion (Cambs) Suffolk Regiment – Joanna Costin

12.01.2017 Beneath the Killing Fields: Exploring the Subterranean Landscapes of the Western Front – Matthew Leonard

29.12.2016 Public Schools and the Great War – Anthony Seldon & David Walsh

29.11.2016 The Illustrated War Reports: Ypres 1914-1915 – Bob Carruthers

18.11.2016 The Somme Reconsidered – Peter Liddle

28.10.2016 The 1915 Campaign – Andrew Rawson

10.10.2016 Ghosts on the Somme – Alastair Fraser, Andrew Robertshaw & Steve Roberts

30.09.2016 Ypres 1914: Messines – Nigel Cave & Jack Sheldon

19.09.2016 Innocence Slaughtered: Gas and the Transformation of Warfare and Society –  Jean Pascal Zanders (ed.)

21.08.2016 Kitchener Wants You: The Man, the Poster, and the Legacy – Martyn Thatcher & Anthony Quinn

11.08.2016 The Somme: The Epic Battle in the Soldiers’ own Words and Photographs – Richard Van Emden

12.07.2016 Epitaphs of the Great War: The Somme – Sarah Wearne

04.07.2016 A Visitor’s Guide: The First Day of the Somme – Jon Cooksey & Jerry Murland

07.06.2016 Private Lord Crawford’s Great War Diaries – Christopher Arnander (ed.)

23.05.2016 The 1914 Campaign – Andrew Rawson

06.05.2016 Somme 1916: Success and Failure on the First Day – Paul Kendall

25.04.2016 From the Somme to Victory – Peter Simkins

05.04.2016 Images of War: The British at First and Second Ypres – Bob Carruthers

18.03.2016 The Fighting Pioneers – Clive Dunn

03.03.2016 The Tangier Archive – Carlos Traspaderne (ed.)

18.02.2016 Shadows of the Somme – Paul Coffey

07.02.2016 Before Action: William Noel Hodgson and the 9th Devons – Charlotte Zeepvat

25.01.2016 Victoria Crosses on the Western Front – Paul Oldfield

04.01.2016 Poppyganda – Matthew Leonard

14.12.2015 1914: Voices from the Battlefields – Matthew Richardson

30.11.2015 Gott Strafe England: The German Air Assault Against Great Britain Vol.1 – Nigel Parker

20.11.2015 Breaking the Fortress Line 1914 – Clayton Donnell

12.11.2015 Dearest Mother:First World War letters home from a young Sapper officer in France & Salonika – Andrew Baines & Joanna Palmer (eds.)

30.10.2015 Roll of Honour: Schooling and the Great War 1914-1919 – Barry Blades

23.10.2015 Padre, Prisoner and Pen-Pusher – Peter Howson

12.10.2015 Mud, Blood and Determination – Simon Peaple

30.09.2015 Brothers in Arms – Karen Farrington (ed.)

14.09.2015 Subterranean Sappers – Iain McHenry

08.09.2015 1918: The Last Act – Barrie Pitt

17.08.2015 Visiting the Fallen: Arras North – Peter Hughes

26.06.2015 They Were There! 1914 – William Langford (ed.)

18.06.2015 Dorking in the Great War – Kathryn Atherton

19.05.2015 The British Army in Italy 1917-1918 – John & Eileen Wilks

08.05.2015 Command and Morale – Gary Sheffield

30.04.2015 The Home Front in the Great War – David Bilton

30.03.2015 The Great War – Field Marshal von Hindenburg

10.03.2015 Machine Gunner 1914-1918 – C. E. Crutchley

23.02.2015 Haig’s Medical Officer – Eugene P. Ryan (ed.)

28.01.2015 A Motorcycle Courier in the Great War – Captain WHL Watson

19.01.2015 All the Bright Company of Heaven – Renny Richardson

08.01.2015 Herbert Columbine VC – Carole McEntee-Taylor

24.12.2014 The Christmas Match – Pehr Thermaenius

09.12.2014 Great War Railwaymen – Jeremy Higgins

03.12.2014 The Battle Book of Ypres – Beatrix Brice

24.11.2014 Teenage Tommy – Richard van Emden

05.11.2014 Mud and Bodies – Saul David (ed.)

30.10.2014 Londoners on the Western Front – David Martin

19.10.2014 Facts about Fritz – Robin Schäfer & Tim Hardy

13.10.2014 9th Service Battalion The Sherwood Foresters – John Morse

17.09.2014 A Sacrifice of Innocents – Alan Barker

31.08.2014 Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to Western Front – North – Tonie & Valmai Holt

28.07.2014 The Retreat from Mons: North – Jon Cooksey & Jerry Murland

21.07.2014 Ypres 1914: Langemarck – Jack Sheldon & Nigel Cave

07.07.2014 Men, Horses, Mud and Stew – Wilfred Cook, edited by Audrey Larkins

20.06.2014 Ace of the Black Cross – Ernst Udet

02.06.2014 Sailor in the Desert – David Gunn

25.04.2014 Sniping in France – Major H. Hesketh-Prichard

15.04.2014 Sorrow Into Pride – Ken Wayman & Barry Crutchley

07.04.2014 Into Touch – Nigel McCrery

16.03.2014 Above Ypres – Bernard Deneckere

15.02.2014 The Life of Major Lanoe Hawker VC – Tyrrel Hawker

23.01.2014 ‘Til the Boys Come Home – Clare Mayo

09.01.2014 Recollections of the Great War in the Air – James McConnell

02.01.2014 The Great War Handbook – Geoff Bridger

15.12.2013 The Devil’s Carnival – John Sneddon

22.11.2013 17th Manchesters – John Hartley

12.11.2013 Dalwood Great War Memorial 1914-1919 – Alison Morgan

28.10.2013 Somme Intelligence – William Langford

24.09.2013 Accrington’s Pals: The Full Story – Andrew Jackson

16.09.2013 Listening to Ludendorff – Paul Goldschmidt (Brendan Whyte ed.)

09.09.2013 Slaughter on the Somme 1 July 1916 – Martin Mace & John Grehan

02.09.2013 And They Loved Not Their Lives Unto Death – Steve Smith

27.08.2013 Posters of the Great War – Frederick Hadley & Martin Pegler

22.08.2013 The Life & Death of an RFA Subaltern on the Western Front – Keith Brain

13.08.2013 The Final Whistle: The Great War in Fifteen Players – Stephen Cooper

30.07.2013 The Nek: A Gallipoli Tragedy – Peter Burness

09.07.2013 Lander’s War – Charles Lander (Michael Harrison ed.)

02.06.2013 Machine Gunner on the Somme – Eric Bird (Sue Sturley ed.)

28.05.2013 World War One: A Layman’s Guide – Scott Addington

15.03.2013 Halesowen War Memorial – Michael L. Green

26.02.2013 Herbert at War 1914-1918 – Herbert Ewing (John Ewing ed.)

14.01.2013 Killing Time: The Archaeology of the First World War – Nicholas Saunders

06.12.2012 The First Day on the Somme – Martin Middlebrook

13.11.2012 Letters Homes 1914-1919 – John Harker (Rosemary Rainbird ed.)

08.10.2012 The Death of Glory – Robin Neillands

08.08.2012 The Quick and The Dead – Richard Van Emden

18.07.2012 A Village at War – John Callcut

01.07.2012 The Missing of the Somme – Geoff Dyer

14.06.2012 Six Weeks – John Lewis-Stempel

10.06.2012 A Major Soldier – Ted Bailey

18.05.2012 The Somme – A.H. Farrar-Hockley

08.05.2012 A Quartermaster at the Front – Edwin Astill (ed.)