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Remembered Today:

What WW1 books are you reading?


andigger

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Just started "Goughie" by Anthony Farrar-Hockley... Old style bio but I'm enjoying it...

 

Bernard

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On 28/01/2020 at 01:02, Waddell said:

Action at Badama Post by Paul Macro

Scott, many thanks.

Paul

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Reading  "A History of 24 Squadron" By Captain A E Illingworth 

I ordered the wrong squadron book by mistake, needed  23 Squadron haha

So having a read of it ;P

 

John

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Just finished ' Cannon Fodder ' by A.D Haslam , i decided to read it after another forum member said they had struggled to finish it as the author was obnoxious .

I must say that i quite enjoyed it , although i must admit the author was the type who didn't make friends easily and i may well have not liked him had i met him .

He was a teacher who reluctantly joined up under the Derby scheme and became a lewis gunner , seeing action at Third Ypres and later was captured during 

the April 1918 offensive . The one thing that i found annoying was that he changed some names of places and regiments , he also states in the book that his 

name was Francis Thackeray Cresswell . I did work out that he served in the Welsh regiment ( 7th , 16th ) and probably 10th Royal Warwicks , i also worked out 

that the towns of 'Quiller' , 'Burnaby' and 'Helgate' were actually Redcar , Saltburn and Middlesborough . The book was published in 1930 and towards the end 

of the book he says " The surest way to have another war is to have a dictator ", which seems quite prophetic . The book he refers to in his introduction where

he mentions the jacket showing an officer in other ranks kit and holding a rifle whilst charging across NML is Edward Liveing's 'Attack' which was published in 1918 .

Edited by Black Maria
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Nurses of Paschendaele caring for the wounded 1914-18

Christine e Hallett

pen &sword.

Similar to roses of no mans land,tells it like it was hard,dirty strenuous work interspersed with nursing,well worth a read

recommended :thumbsup: 

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27 minutes ago, doyle3 said:

just been given a loan of a 1922 copy of Swindon's War Record to peruse

Is this the one by Bavin ?

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6 minutes ago, doyle3 said:

Yes indeed.

 

Swindon Library have done a reprint of this book.

It give quite a good account of the work done by the town's women for the POW'ed men of the Wiltshire regiment.

 

If you plan to use it as a reference tool, be aware that many of the men's names or initials are wrong :-(

 

Grant

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1 minute ago, grantowi said:

 

Swindon Library have done a reprint of this book.

It give quite a good account of the work done by the town's women for the POW'ed men of the Wiltshire regiment.

 

If you plan to use it as a reference tool, be aware that many of the men's names or initials are wrong :-(

 

Grant

I've been through the copy in West Swindon library before. Going through the book again as given an unexpected loan.

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9 minutes ago, doyle3 said:

I've been through the copy in West Swindon library before. Going through the book again as given an unexpected loan.

 

In Central Library's reference section they are selling brand new reprints, well worth a visit, if you are in the area

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5 minutes ago, grantowi said:

 

In Central Library's reference section they are selling brand new reprints, well worth a visit, if you are in the area

thanks. May pop into town to get a copy.

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Just finished ‘Men of War; Masculinity and the First World War in Britain’ by Leeds University academic Jessica Meyer. This is part of Palgrave Macmillans Genders and Sexualities in History Series, which in this book focuses on the personal narratives of service men and how WW1 changed ideas of masculinity.

 

Meyer uses soldiers letters from the front, personal diaries and post war memoires along with personal statements by disabled veterans to the Ministry of Pensions (held within PIN 26 award files) to show how the war forced or encouraged men to reassess commonly held  Victorian/Edwardian views of masculinity.

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Just finished reading 'The Middle Parts of Fortune' by Frederic Manning ( 'Her Privates We' was the expurgated version ) . My copy is the 2012 Folio Society edition,

a nicely produced hardback in decorative boards and with 9 new illustrations , copies are now obtainable quite cheaply . It's a classic and rightly so , it's a great read.

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On 25/02/2020 at 19:40, ilkley remembers said:

Just finished ‘Men of War; Masculinity and the First World War in Britain’ by Leeds University academic Jessica Meyer. This is part of Palgrave Macmillans Genders and Sexualities in History Series, which in this book focuses on the personal narratives of service men and how WW1 changed ideas of masculinity.

 

VERY interesting... I'm considering a thesis on gender for 3rd Cycle and this might be a very good source. 

 

Bought ONE book while on holiday in the US (yes, we ended up at Barnes and Nobles one day): Neal Bascomb "The escape artists". It's about the "greatest prison break of the Great War", out of Hellminden. 

Lent it to one of my travelcompanions for the flight home, and he found it nice. 

Anybody else read it?? 

 

M.

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I didn't know of the Bacomb book (and at least one Amazon reviewer couldn't get past chapter 2) but I've recently read "Escape From Germany" by Neil Hanson, which, although a little repetitive in places, was a thoroughly enjoyable read. I picked this up cheaply after finishing "The Tunnellers of Holzminden " by Durnford, for a more modern slant on the escape.

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1 hour ago, Marilyne said:

 

 

 

Bought ONE book while on holiday in the US (yes, we ended up at Barnes and Nobles one day): Neal Bascomb "The escape artists". It's about the "greatest prison break of the Great War", out of Hellminden. 

Lent it to one of my travelcompanions for the flight home, and he found it nice. 

Anybody else read it?? 

 

M.

 

Hi Marilyne

 

I read it last year. See Post 3329 in this thread.

 

Cheers Martin B

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Just finished "The Battle of Brains" by Ferdinand Tuohy, having spent years trying to find a copy . . . and what a disappointment. For some reason (surely not censorship in 1930?), Tuohy decided to relate all the stories of espionage and intelligence gathering in semi-fictional form (if there is such a thing), so the reader is unsure what is fact and what isn't. As such, a lot of it reads like Le Queux.

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1 hour ago, Resurgam13 said:

I didn't know of the Bacomb book (and at least one Amazon reviewer couldn't get past chapter 2) but I've recently read "Escape From Germany" by Neil Hanson, which, although a little repetitive in places, was a thoroughly enjoyable read. I picked this up cheaply after finishing "The Tunnellers of Holzminden " by Durnford, for a more modern slant on the escape.

 'Beyond the Tumult ' by Barry Winchester is a good book on the subject as well .

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8 hours ago, Marilyne said:

VERY interesting... I'm considering a thesis on gender for 3rd Cycle and this might be a very good source. 

 

Having met her briefly once, Jessica Meyer, seems to be quite approachable. This is her profile page at Leeds Univ. which details her WW1 interests https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/staff/974/dr-jessica-meyer

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 17/08/2019 at 19:45, Donald D said:

I am currently reading "The Invisible Cross" by Andrew Davidson. The book follows the letters written to his new wife from the beginning of the war through to 1918. He rose from being a company commander to 2ic 1st Cameronians, and eventually OC of the battalion. I am only on page 87, so early days. Very interesting so far.

I am about half way through this book and really enjoying it, well written and easy to read. Chaplin is quite blunt about how he feels about certain officers ,Dan Snow's Great-Grandfather gets a mention,not a popular man according to Chaplin, interesting stuff though.

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I started reading "Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I" (one of the Palgrave Macmillan titles on offer, much reduced, late last year) and rather wished I hadn't. Still, it's ideal bedtime reading in one sense as I start to nod off after a dozen pages.

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Just started reading "Refilling Haig's Armies" The replacement of British infantry casualties on the western front by Alison Hine.

 

Andy

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On ‎13‎/‎01‎/‎2020 at 17:23, David Spencer said:

Just in case nobody's said it yet: Lice, by Blaise Cendrars is fantastic.

Not sure how much is fact embellished into fiction, but as a snapshot of legionnaire rogues at large in the Gt War, it's a grand read.

 

the original title is more interesting,: "la main coupée" … Cendrars lost his arm in the war and then taught himself to type with his left. It took him quite some time to finish the book.

I read it a looong time ago… it's still somwhere in the still unpacked boxes of books I have at home. A real classic!!

 

Right now I am, to tell yopu the Truth, horribly behind on any "reading-schedule" I could have invented… I was counting on the trip to the US to read a bit, but in between the various photo shoots, the march and the visits … so I'm finishing Jean-Michel Veranneman's "Belgium in the Great War" , then will be working very hard and long hours to put my notes and references in order before starting a new book, because both my desk at home and the one in my little room in Marche look like a bomb exploded in the middle of a stack of post-its … they're everywhere!!!

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Just read an excellent new (pub.last year for the centenary) book on the Amritsar massacre, by Kim Wagner, a history teacher at Queen Mary, University of London. 'Amritsar 1919', subtitled "An Empire of Fear', puts the whole tragedy in context, showing how British policy, notable in the Punjab, was coloured by memories of the so-called Indian Mutiny of 1857 and fears of another uprising. Mutual incomprehension, racist colonial attitudes and the incompetence of senior officials in Amritsar and Lahore completed the ghastly picture.

 

Highly recommended.

 

Cheers Martin B

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