The Somme: Ninety Years On

[George Armstrong Custer]

The Somme: Ninety Years On - A Visual History by Duncan Youel & David Edgell, Forewords by HRH The Prince of Wales; Brigadier Tim Gregson, military attache Paris; Major-General Evelyn Webb-Carter, Controller, Army Benevolent Fund; Piers Storie-Pugh, Head of Remembrance Travel, Royal British Legion. Published by DK Books, with the assistance of the Imperial War Museum, The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, The Royal British Legion, and The Army Benevolent Fund, 2006, £25 (currently £20 at Ottakers).

Just bought this today, so haven't gone through it at leisure yet. But it looks very well put together. Visually it is lavish, with a mix of well-chosen period photographs with colour views of the Somme today, including fold-out then-and-now panoramic views in b/w and colour. A recent project of the authors' was the design of the visual displays and films in the Visitor Centre at Thiepval (whose creator, Sir Frank Sanderson, is interviewed in the inclusive DVD, as is the museum director, Guillaume de Fonclare). The DVD included with the book contains period film footage, panoramas of the battlefield and interviews from the Somme today (including with Mme Potie, the mayoress of Thiepval; battlefield tour guide Rod Bedford; Dominique Zandari, relic collector and proprietor of 'Le Tommy Bar', Poziers; Teddy Colligan, custodian of the Ulster Memorial Tower; Philippe Feret, owner of the old railway station of Beaucourt-sur-Ancre and of Helico-Somme helicopter trips over the Somme; Arlene King, director of the Newfoundland Memorial Park; Rod and Jackie Bedford, proprietors of the old Cafe Jourdain at Mailly-Maillet; historian Michael Stedman, and several others). As well as the DVD, the format of the book is also similar to Peter Barton's The Battlefields of the First World War Will come back when I've had a chance to go through the text, but wonder if others have looked it over yet?

Ciao,

GAC

[Terry Carter]

Even though, I have not read your review yet. It looks very good. So I just logged onto Amazon and bought one for £16.50 with free postage !

Thanks for letting us know.

Terry

[George Armstrong Custer]

I just logged onto Amazon and bought one for £16.50 with free postage !

AAAARGH! That's nearly double my saving of a fiver, Terry! Good that the book is being made accessible price-wise, though - something we see much more of nowadays, though I believe the heavy discounting does increasingly have a - possibly adverse - effect upon what type of books make it to publication (I just bought Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's excellent and just released Dunkirk: Fight To The Last Man discounted by £7 at Waterstone's - but the Montefiore name on a history book is likely to assure large volume sales, thus making the discounting a viable proposition........)

The Somme Ninety Years On is so far as I've browsed excellent. The DVD, whilst of interest, is not exceptional and is really a bonus - the real value in this package is the book. I was intrigued when I first picked it up to see what Chuck Windsor would have to say on the Somme, and was pleasantly surprised. Whatever one's views on the PoW, I think most will agree his Foreword is a measured and thoughtful reflection as the 90th anniversary approaches (though the book probably didn't need the full page colour pic of HRH and Camilla! For those interested, here's what Charlie says:

"I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to contribute my thoughts to this book which commemmorates the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. The magnitude of our losses on 1st July 1916 caused a profound shock to the nation at the time and the scars remain with us today. It was not just the sheer scale of our losses, fifty thousand casualties in one day, of which 20,000 were killed (or missing, presumed dead), it was also the fact that for the first time in our history, we committed a citizen army to the assault. Thus it was that hundreds of friends and colleagues, who had volunteered together from factories and tram works and coal mines, to form battalions of Pals, went over the top together and died together, often before they could reach the enemy trenches. Many villages and towns lost an entire generation of their menfolk - their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers - in one terrible day. There are monuments to their memory throughout the United Kingdom and their headstones, in hundreds of cemeteries across the Somme, are a testament to their sacrifice; the Thiepval monument alone bears the names of more than 72,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who remain missing from the battle.

"Sadly, there are very few surviving veterans of the First World War alive today. However, the story of their suffering, tenacity and courage lives on - not just on Remembrance Day and through many other ceremonies, but also as part of our educational curriculum. More school children visit the battlefields of Northern France today than ever before. The legend of 'Tommy Atkins' is a firm part of our national self-image. We will remember him.

"This book is a welcome addition to the story of the Battle of the Somme. It is primarily pictorial history, juxtaposing archive and contemporary material, and it is part documentary, part travelogue. It gives the reader a clear orientation to the battlefields and connects them with villages and towns back home, so that it is very much easier to locate the places where our forebears fought, and died, on the Somme. I am delighted that part of the proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the Army Benevolent Fund, which was established by my Grandfather, King George VI, in 1945. The need for the A.B.F., for the welfare of our soldiers, serving and retired, and their families, continues to this day."

It is indeed nice to be able to buy a good book in the knowledge that part of the proceeds are going to such a good cause.

Ciao,

GAC