Henry Allingham is the last British serviceman alive to have volunteered for active duty in the First World War and is one of very few people who can directly recall the horror of that conflict. In Kitchener's Last Volunteer, he vividly recaptures how life was lived in the Edwardian era and how it was altered irrevocably by the slaughter of millions of men in the Great War, and by the subsequent coming of the modern age. Henry is unique in that he saw action on land, sea and in the air with the British Naval Air Service. He was present at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 with the British Grand Fleet and went on to serve on the Western Front. He befriended several of the young pilots who would lose their lives, and he himself suffered the privations of the front line under fire. In recent years, Henry was given the opportunity to tell his remarkable story to a wider audience through a BBC documentary, and he has since become a hero to many, meeting royalty and having many honours bestowed upon him. This is the touching story of an ordinary man's extraordinary life - one who has outlived six monarchs and twenty-one prime ministers, and who represents a last link to a vital point in our nation's history.

Literature is at the heart of popular understandings of the First World War in Britain, and has perpetuated a popular memory of the conflict centred on disillusionment, horror and futility. This book examines how and why literature has had this impact, exploring the role played by authors, publishers and readers in constructing the memory of the war since 1918. It demonstrates that publishers were as influential as authors in shaping perceptions of the conflict, and it provides a detailed analysis of critical and popular responses to war books, tracing the evolution of readers' attitudes to the war between 1918 and 2014. By exploring the cultural legacy of the war from these two previously overlooked perspectives, Vincent Trott offers fresh insights regarding the emergence of a collective memory of the First World War in Britain. Drawing on a broad range of primary source material, including publishers' correspondence, dust jackets, adverts, book reviews and diary entries, and examining canonical authors such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Vera Brittain alongside long-forgotten texts and more recent autobiographical works by Harry Patch and Henry Allingham, Publishers, Readers and the Great War provides a rich and nuanced analysis of the climate within which First World War literature was written, published and received since 1918.

In the early days of the First World War, Lord Kitchener made his famous appeal for volunteers to join the New Army. Men flocked to recruiting offices to enlist, and on some days tens of thousands of potential soldiers responded to his call. Men had to be at least eighteen years old to join up, and nineteen to serve overseas, but in the flurry of activity many younger boys came to enlist: some were only thirteen or fourteen. Many were turned away, but a lot were illegally conscripted, and as many as 250,000 underage boys found themselves fighting for King and Country in the First World War. Over half would never return home. In this groundbreaking new book, John Oakes - whose own father-in-law walked out of the Welsh valleys to join the Royal Navy at the age of fourteen - delves into the complex history of Britain's youngest Great War recruits. Focusing on the recruitment crisis of 1914, he reveals why boys joined up, what their experiences were and how they survived to endure a lifetime of memories. For those who didn't, an unknown grave awaited, and in some cases their mothers never knew what had become of their children.

This interesting book looks at the British army of 1914, an army of conscripts and volunteers. The effect of this mobilization on the social and political climate of Britain and the kind of army that was created are thoroughly explored. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Until recently James Beatson was one of the millions of forgotten soldiers of the Great War. But after 90 years his diary has been rediscovered, perfectly preserved, and his story can now be told. It is a moving, intensely personal and beautifully written narrative by an extraordinary young man who witnessed one of the darkest episodes in European history. His experience gives us a telling insight into the thoughts and reactions of a self- educated, patriotic and religious individual confronted by the horrors of warfare on the Western Front. Indeed, after reading the diary of a dead German soldier, Beatson begins to identify more with the thoughts and fears of his enemy than he does with those he loves at home. Reminiscent of some of the greatest of the First World War authors, the diary is also the record of a gifted writer whose potential was tragically curtailed. For, shortly after marrying his childhood sweet heart, he was killed in action at the Battle of the Somme in one of the many failed attacks on High Wood. For this, the first publication of Beatsons diary, Shaun Springer and Stuart Humphreys have edited and illustrated the text and provided an introduction, describing Beatsons family background and the campaign on the Western Front in which he took part. James Beatson was the eldest of nine children. He was raised in Scotland by working-class parents. He was a civil engineer until, as with so many, the declaration of war offered him the chance of adventure. He enlisted in the first days of the war in the Royal Scots and was an eyewitness to the first poison gas attack by the Germans in 1915. Despite the horrors he experienced, Private Beatson never lost his love of humanity nor his faith. He now lies buried, lost somewhere on the Somme when in July 1916 he breathed his last in that infamous battle.

What greater pride might a young man feel than to serve shoulder to shoulder with his friends in time of war? To enlist into the army with his pals, chums, mates, filling the ranks of battalions that drew their strength from the local community, from amongst factory workers, miners, shop-workers and tradesmen. In August 1914, what more fitting role was there to play than to answer the country’s call to arms? The past is another country, of course: the world in which these men grew up and the mores that took them to the Western Front might appear innocent and naive today. The Somme battle eviscerated many of these free-spirited battalions. But the raising of this New Army – a purely volunteer army – lives on in the public consciousness, their collective story part of our heritage. Who were these volunteers who poured into recruiting offices, overwhelming the staff? What motivated these men – too often just boys - to join up? How did they feel about one another and the new military regime into which so many ran with enthusiasm, without much thought as to the future? After the success of his previous books, The Somme, The Road to Passchendaele, and 1918, best-selling Great War historian Richard van Emden returns to the beginning of the War with this, his latest volume, including an unparalleled collection of soldiers’ own photographs taken on their privately-held cameras. Drawing on long-forgotten memoirs, diaries and letters written by the men who enlisted, Richard tells the riveting story of Kitchener’s volunteers, before they went to fight.

The issue of military executions during the war has always been controversial and embargoes have made it difficult for researchers to get at the truth. Now these two writers give us a vast amount of information. They show that trials were grossly unfair and incompetent. Many of the condemned men had been soldiers of exemplary behaviour, courage and leadership but had cracked under the dreadful strain of trench warfare. This acclaimed book is the authority on this shameful saga.