Somme
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
On the first day of July 1916, nearly 60,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded, or reported missing — making it the bloodiest single day in the history of the British Army — and Somme by Lyn Macdonald stands as the definitive oral history of that catastrophic five-month campaign on the Western Front. Drawing on hundreds of first-hand testimonies from survivors, Macdonald reconstructs the Battle of the Somme not through the cold lens of military strategy, but through the raw, visceral voices of the men who lived and died in the mud and wire of northern France. The result is a shattering chronicle of courage, confusion, camaraderie, and unimaginable loss. Macdonald's signature methodology — weaving together personal letters, diaries, and recorded interviews — transforms what could be a dry military account into a profoundly human document, ensuring that the individual soldier is never lost beneath the weight of statistics. Her work sits alongside the finest works of Great War historiography, earning comparison with the writings of John Keegan and Lyn's own earlier masterpiece, They Called It Passchendaele. For anyone seeking to understand not just the tactics of the Somme, but its enduring psychological and cultural scar on the British nation, this is an essential and deeply moving account that refuses to let the fallen be forgotten.
Author: Lyn Macdonald
Format: Hardback
Genre: WW1
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
On the first day of July 1916, nearly 60,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded, or reported missing — making it the bloodiest single day in the history of the British Army — and Somme by Lyn Macdonald stands as the definitive oral history of that catastrophic five-month campaign on the Western Front. Drawing on hundreds of first-hand testimonies from survivors, Macdonald reconstructs the Battle of the Somme not through the cold lens of military strategy, but through the raw, visceral voices of the men who lived and died in the mud and wire of northern France. The result is a shattering chronicle of courage, confusion, camaraderie, and unimaginable loss. Macdonald's signature methodology — weaving together personal letters, diaries, and recorded interviews — transforms what could be a dry military account into a profoundly human document, ensuring that the individual soldier is never lost beneath the weight of statistics. Her work sits alongside the finest works of Great War historiography, earning comparison with the writings of John Keegan and Lyn's own earlier masterpiece, They Called It Passchendaele. For anyone seeking to understand not just the tactics of the Somme, but its enduring psychological and cultural scar on the British nation, this is an essential and deeply moving account that refuses to let the fallen be forgotten.