'An extraordinary biography by the very last witness of a devastating four years in British history' Daily Mail

On 17 June 2009, Harry Patch celebrated his 111th birthday. At the time, he was the last living British Tommy who had fought in the trenches during the First World War. Now that direct link with the past has gone. From Patch's vivid memories of an Edwardian childhood, through the horrors of the battles of Ypres and Passchendaele to working on the home front in the Second World War and fame in later life as a veteran, The Last Fighting Tommy is the story of an ordinary man's extraordinary life.

A hundred years after the end of the Great War, this powerful account of a life defined by those four devastating years remains as important and relevant as ever. This updated edition includes a new introduction, as well as previously unseen photographs.

The offensive on the Somme took place between July and November 1916 and is perhaps the most iconic battle of the Great War. It was there that Kitchener s famous Pals Battalions were first sent into action en masse and it was a battlefield where many of the dreams and aspirations of a nation, hopeful of victory, were agonizingly dashed. Because of its legendary status, the Somme has been the subject of many books, and many more will come out next year. However, nothing has ever been published on the Battle in which the soldiers own photographs have been used to illustrate both the campaign s extraordinary comradeship and its carnage."

Passchendaele is the next volume in the highly-regarded series of books from the best-selling First World War historian Richard van Emden. Once again, using the winning formula of diaries and memoirs, and above all original photographs taken on illegally-held cameras by the soldiers themselves, Richard tells the story of 1917, of life both in and out of the line culminating in perhaps the most dreaded battle of them all, the Battle of Passchendaele. His pervious book, The Somme, has now sold nearly 20,000 copies in hardback and softback, proving that the public appetite is undiminished for new, original stories illustrated with over 150 rarely or never-before-seen battlefield images. The author has an outstanding collection of over 5,000 privately-taken and overwhelmingly unpublished photographs, revealing the war as it was seen by the men involved, an existence that was sometimes exhilarating, too often terrifying, and occasionally even fun. Richard van Emden interviewed 270 veterans of the Great War, has written extensively about the soldiers' lives, and has worked on many television documentaries, always concentrating on the human aspects of war, its challenge and its cost to the millions of men involved. This book will be published in June 2017, in time for the 100th anniversary of the epic Battle of Passchendaele which began on 31st July 1917 Richard van Emden s books sold over 650,000 books and have appeared in The Times bestseller chart on a number of occasions. He lives in West London and regularly appears on television, mostly recently as BBC1 s historian for the national commemorations of the Somme Battle. He has appeared on over forty television documentaries and has written nineteen books on the First World War.

A British soldier walked over to the German front line to deliver newspapers; British women married to Germans became "enemy aliens" in their own country; a high-ranking British POW discussed his own troops' heroism with the kaiser on the battlefield. These are just three amazing stories of interaction between the opposing sides in the Great War that eminent historian Richard van Emden has unearthed--incidents that show brutality, great humanity, and, above all, the bizarre nature of a conflict between two nations with long-standing ties of kinship and friendship. "Meeting the Enemy" reveals for the first time how contact was maintained on many levels throughout the war, and its stories--sometimes funny, often moving--give us a new perspective on the lives of ordinary men and women caught up in extraordinary events.

It hardly seems credible today that a nineteenyear- old boy, just commissioned into the Seaforth Highlanders, could lead a platoon of men into the carnage of the Battle of the Somme. Or that, as the machine gun bullets whistled past and shells exploded, he could maintain his own morale to lead a platoon, keeping its discipline and cohesion, in spite of desperate losses. Norman Collins, the author of this superb memoir, was this remarkable man.Using Norman's own words, Last Man Standing follows him from his childhood in Hartlepool to his subsequent service in France. The book also covers such shattering events as the German naval assault on Hartlepool in December 1914 when, as a seventeen-year-old, Norman was subjected to as big a bombardment as any occurring on the Western Front at that time. Norman's love for, and devotion to, the men under his command shine out in this book and his stories are gripping and deeply moving. They are illustrated by a rare collection of private photographs taken at or near the front by Norman himself, although the use of a camera was strictly proscribed by the Army. Most of the images have never been published before.

In May 1918, Angela and Leopold Mond received a knock on the front door. It was the postman and he was delivering the letter every family in the United Kingdom dreaded: the notification of a loved one's battlefield death, in their case the death in action of their eldest child, their son, Lieutenant Francis Mond. The twenty-two year old Royal Flying Corps pilot, along with his Observer, Lieutenant Edgar Martyn, had been shot down over no man's land, both being killed instantly. If there was one crumb of comfort, it was the news that a brave Australian officer, Lieutenant A.H. Hill, had gone out under fire and recovered both bodies: there would, at the very least, be a grave to visit after the war. And then, nothing. No further news was forthcoming. Angela Mond wrote to the Imperial War Graves Commission asking for further details but there was confusion. No one knew where Mond's and Martyn's bodies were buried. There had been an initial trail: both bodies had been taken to the village of Corbie and a lorry summoned to take them away, but from that last sighting both men had simply disappeared. It seems incredible that all traces of the burial of two officers duly identified, should be lost,' wrote Angela to the authorities in December 1918. And so began one of the most extraordinary private investigations undertaken in the aftermath of the Great War. Aged 48 and the mother of five children, Angela, a wealthy and well-connected socialite from London's West End, embarked on an exhaustive personal quest to find her son, an investigation that took her to the battlefields and cemeteries of France and into correspondence with literally hundreds of French civilians and British and German servicemen. In the meantime, as she searched, she bought the ground on which her son's plane had crashed and erected a private memorial to Francis, a memorial that still survives. Angela's quest for her son is reflective of the wider yearning amongst those who lost loved ones in the Great War: the absolute need find a form of solace through the resolution of a search. More than 750,000 servicemen and women had been killed, half of whom had no known grave. After the Great War there were families who hunted for their missing sons for a decade or more and when no body was recovered, back doors were forever left unlocked just in case that son should one day return. Lieutenant Francis Mond's case was exceptional, perhaps unique in the circumstances of his death and subsequent disappearance, but the emotions behind the search for his body were shared by families all over the country.

1918: The Fight for Victory. The Decisive Year in Soldiers' Own Words and Photographs is the next volume in the remarkable series of books from the best-selling First World War historian Richard van Emden. Revisiting the winning formula of diaries and memoirs, and above all original photographs taken on illegally-held cameras by the soldiers themselves, Richard tells the story of 1918, of both the ferocious spring offensive that so nearly brought victory for the Germans in the West, and the tenacious British rearguard fight that thwarted them. The book also tells the vivid story of the Allied breakthrough and the return to open warfare that was to bring victory in November 1918. His previous books, The Road to Passchendaele and The Somme have sold over 30,000 copies in hardback and softback, proving that the public appetite is undiminished for new, original stories illustrated with over 150 rarely or never-before-seen battlefield images. The author has an outstanding collection of over 5,000 privately-taken and overwhelmingly unpublished photographs, revealing the war as it was seen by the men involved, an existence that was sometimes exhilarating, too often terrifying, and occasionally even fun. This book will be published in September 2018, in time for the 100th anniversary of the Armistice and the national commemorations that will mark the end of the four-year-long series of centennial events to mark the Great War.

1918 proved to be the Allies' year of victory, but what a monumental effort it was! From the moment Germany launched its all-out Spring offensive to win the war, British and Empire troops fought a tenacious and often last-ditch rearguard action. The Germans gambled with their best, battle-hardened men in one desperate offensive after another, searching for a decisive breakthrough that never came. In those dark days of March, April and May 1918, Allied troops were tested as never before, their morale placed under microscopic scrutiny, their will to win examined and re-examined. Once again, the soldiers tell their story, giving their own perceptive thoughts and profoundly moving insights while never forgetting the humour that helped them survive. And when the tables were turned in August, there began a campaign that would throw the enemy across the old ruptured battlefields of 1916 and 1917 and beyond, into open untouched countryside in the full bloom of summer. It took a hundred days of relentless fighting to reach Mons, the Belgian town where it had all started four years before. A century on, best-selling First World War historian Richard van Emden builds on the success of his previous books, The Somme and The Road to Passchendaele, with this next volume including an extraordinary collection of soldiers' photographs taken on their illegally-held cameras. Utilising an unparalleled collection of memoirs, diaries and letters written by the men who fought, Richard tells the riveting story of 1918, when decisive victory was grasped from near catastrophe.