The Great War by Isobel Charman

Accompanying an all-star ITV series, The Great War: The People's Story gives an incredibly personal perspective on the First World War, both at home and at the front, by vividly reconstructing the experiences of individuals through their diaries and letters.

During the First World War three quarters of a million British people died – a figure so huge that it feels impossible to give it a human context. Consequently we struggle to truly grasp the impact this devastating conflict must have had on people's day-to-day lives. We resort to looking at the war from a distance, viewing its events in terms of their political or military significance.

The Great War: The People's Story is different. Like the all-star ITV series it accompanies, it immerses the reader in the everyday experiences of real people who lived through the war. Using letters, diaries, and memoirs – many of which have never previously been published – Isobel Charman has painstakingly reconstructed the lives of people such as separated newly-weds Alan and Dorothy Lloyd, plucky enlisted factory-worker Reg Evans and proudly independent suffragist Kate Parry Frye. A century on, they here tell their stories in their own words, offering a uniquely personal account of the conflict.

The Great War: The People's Story is both a meticulously researched piece of narrative history and a deeply moving remembrance of the extraordinary acts of extremely ordinary people.

Isobel Charman

Reviews

“ Deeply moving, fascinating and powerful. ”

Sunday Mirror

“ A handful of people dominate this wonderful book. They are not special or famous but their stories will haunt you for a very long time... Charman's great achievement is to let the people who lived through all this speak for themselves. You will be torn between admiration, pity and anger. ”

The Herald

“ This tome lets those who lived through these terrible times tell you how it really was in their own words. From the gung-ho to the fearful, the petty to the practical, the sorrows and the shocks, the pitiful, the heroic, the angry… they put it all down on paper in a way that lets you gauge whether you could have lived through the terror – and be in awe of those who did. ”

Sunday Sport

“ This is a deeply sobering, essential read. ”

Bookbag

Paperback

9780099591252

June 15, 2015

Arrow

528 pages

RRP $32.00
Online retailers
Or

Find your local bookstore at www.booksellers.co.nz/directory
EBook

9781448185931

August 7, 2014

Cornerstone Digital

528 pages
Online retailers
Or

Find your local bookstore at www.booksellers.co.nz/directory