Great Writers on the Great War

This book takes the reader, alongside Kipling, to the training camps of Kitchener's army in the south of England, to the lines of the French army and the villages just behind them, to sea with submarines, minesweepers and the big ships of Jutland, to the Alpine front between Italy and Austria-Hungary and alongside the Irish Guards as they fight in the first battles of the war in the summer of 1914. Together with other leading writers, at the start of the First World War Rudyard Kipling wrote in support of Britain's war aims. Kipling's War is taken from four of his articles and pamphlets, 'The New Army in Training', 'France at War', 'The War in the Mountains' and 'The War at Sea', as well as from Kipling's history of the Irish Guards, the unit in which his son was serving when he died at Loos in 1915.

Edith Wharton, the author of classic novels including The Age of Innocence, was an American living in Paris when war broke out in 1914. In the months that followed, she was one of the few foreigners allowed to travel to the front lines. She wrote a series of articles documenting her travels, always driven to investigate as much as possible, whether sordid hospitals barely removed from the fighting or the singular experience of standing on the front line itself. The French soldiers and civilians she met along the way were a constant source of admiration for Edith. These beautifully-written reports are a moving tribute both to the nation she loved so well and to her own status as one of the century's greatest writers.

'The observer, wherever on the globe his eyes were turned, would have found no area immune from the struggle.' John Buchan, author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, spent the First World War serving in a variety of official positions, but he also helped to produce a monthly magazine chronicling the history of the war, which was later published in twenty-four volumes as Nelson's History of the War. With his access to secret information about the course of the war, Buchan had a clear grasp of the situation and in this book he puts it across to the reader with all the narrative skill of a novelist. Buchan's War takes us through some of the key campaigns and battles of the war, from the opening of the fighting and the Battle of the Marne via Verdun, Jutland and the Somme to the last German offensives in 1918 and the Armistice, in the words of one of Britain's greatest thriller writers.

Revolt in the Desert is the extraordinary story of the war in Arabia between 1916 and 1918, written by one of the war's most extraordinary characters, Lawrence of Arabia. It tells of his adventures and life amongst the Arab tribesmen, the daring raids on the Turks, the demolition of railway lines, the attacking of desert outposts, and of the opening of 'the road to Damascus' and eventual overthrow of the Turks in the inhospitable landscape of the Middle East. Few had made headway with the Bedouin and Arabs before Lawrence, but his strength of character and his personality suited this war perfectly and he was soon considered to be hugely important in the fight in the Middle East both by his superiors and by the Arabs who rallied around him. This is his story, from his viewpoint. T.E. Lawrence truly was a great writer on the Great War.

On the outbreak of the First World War, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to enlist in the military in order to set a good example to others, despite being fifty-five. His offer was refused, but he was still active in support of his country, in particular lobbying on behalf of British servicemen to improve their conditions and safety. Conan Doyle began work on The British Campaign in France and Flanders shortly after 1914, of which this volume contains an edited selection. His analysis of the opening year of the war examines the movements of troops throughout many of the major battles, charting both victories and desperate retreats along with individual accounts of heroism and action. The impeccable style and vividly insightful descriptions with which he depicts the Western Front mark him as one of the century's greatest writers.