SILENT NIGHT brings to life one of the most unlikely and touching events in the annals of war. In the early months of WWI, on Christmas Eve, men on both sides left their trenches, laid down their arms, and joined in a spontaneous celebration with their new friends, the enemy. For a brief, blissful time, remembered since in song and story, a world war stopped. Even the participants found what they were doing incredible. Germans placed candle-lit Christmas trees on trench parapets and warring soldiers sang carols. In the spirit of the season they ventured out beyond their barbed wire to meet in No Man's Land, where they buried the dead in moving ceremonies, exchanged gifts, ate and drank together, and joyously played football, often with improvised balls. The truce spread as men defied orders and fired harmlessly into the air. But, reluctantly, they were forced to re-start history's most bloody war. SILENT NIGHT vividly recovers a dreamlike event, one of the most extraordinary of Christmas stories.

Now It Can Be Told comprises of Philip Gibbs recollections regarding the First World War, in which he served as an officially commissioned war reporter. Titled in reference to the relieving of censorship laws following the conclusion of World War One in 1918, this book is noticeably different from the censored or dumbed-down accounts published under Gibbs' byline in popular newspapers as the conflict wore on. In this book, the full scale of the horror wrought in Europe is told unflinchingly with the aim of showing the depravity of conflict and the destruction that results. Early in the war, Gibbs' frank and accurate accounts of the carnage of modern warfare unnerved the British government, who were concerned his accounts would demoralize citizens and turn them against the war effort. Gibbs was ordered home; on refusing to cease reporting, he was arrested and forcibly brought back to Britain.