Lest We Forget: A Concise Companion to the First World War (my new book)

I know what you’re thinking.  Stephen can’t be releasing another book.  I know, I know.  I’m sorry.  Long-time readers will know that I spend my summers giving guided tours and during winter I spend most of my time writing and it just so happens that it takes a certain amount of time for books to be released.

Anyway this is a different sort of book as it is my first history book and something I am rather proud of especially as it is about one of my favourite areas of history, World War One.  I’ve written before about certain aspects of WW1 including my relation who fought the Red Baron, Armistice Day, Poetry from the trenches and recently about our new village memorial.

I’ve always been interested in WW1 and have visited many of the important sights.  Actually I have quite a collection of barbed wire, shrapnel and shell casings in my writers den.  I left the hand grenade behind after it started making a high pitched whine that I later found out to be my camcorder battery.

Lest We Forget is an easy to read guide to WW1 and is only 122 pages long.  Those 122 pages however cover pretty much the entire war as you can see from the chapter titles below.

1    Introduction
2    The Road to War
3    Over By Christmas
4    The Pals Battalions
5    The Race To The Sea
6    The Christmas Truce
7    Life In The Trenches
8    WW1 Literature & Poetry
9    Verdun
10    Battle Of The Somme
11    The War At Sea
12    The Home Front
13    Women And The War
14    New Weapons Of War
15    Desert Campaigns
16    War In The Air
17    Gallipoli
18    World War One Legends
19    They Called It Paschendaele
20    The War Around The World
21    Armenia
22    The Russian Revolution
23    The Americans Are Coming!
24    The Hundred Day Offensive
25    The Armistice
26    Aftermath
27    Remembering The Great War
28    Maps and Photographs

From Finland to New Zealand, India to Canada, Lawrence of Arabia to the Red Baron, the horrors of Verdun to the musings of the poets, this book gives a great introduction to the war for casual readers and those wanting a new insight into WW1.

1914 is the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1 and for the next 4 years, we will be remembering a succession of 100th anniversaries relating to the war such as the Christmas Truce football matches, the sinking of the Lusitania, Gallipoli and the awful first day of The Somme   .  Lest We Forget covers each one of these epochal events and many more.

I’ve also included the run up to the war itself, insights into how it effects the modern world and how we remember the war today.

Not many people today realise that Britain was bombed by Zeppelins in WW1 and that the east coast was attacked by the German navy.  Or that the American entry into WW1 was very much delayed and that British grew so bewildered that their contacts in Washington fed the American government lies about German school children having parties to celebrate the sinking of American civilian ships.

Everyone knows about the Nazi holocaust in WW2 but very few know their allies in WW1, the Turkish Ottomans carried out their own holocaust of Christian Armenians or that progress on the western front was so slight that the first and last British soldier killed in the trenches are buried precisely six feet but nearly 1 million men apart.

Think the French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys, read about Verdun.  Think the British generals were bad on the treatment of their men at The Somme, learn about the final day of the war and an American commander who cost countless lives just so he could have a hot bath.

Learn about the eccentric British commander in Africa who insisted on naming his boats after animals, the German Kaiser whose feelings of inferiority led the world to war.  The accounts of the crucified soldier, the Angel of Mons, the end of empires, revolutions and uprisings and the incredible effort to remember the dead.

Of course, it is called WW1 for a reason and this book deals with campaigns in Africa, Asia and the south pacific as well as less remembered campaigns than those we all talk about.

Learn about the hi-tech advances in areas such as tanks and poison gas and some low-tech solutions like urine soaked cloths.

Lest We Forget is available in Kindle and Paperback formats in all good on-line outlets and literary stores too.  The Kindle version is published by Endeavour Press of London, one of the worlds leading digital publishers whilst the paperback version is available too for those folk like me who prefer a good book and the paperback includes a number of maps and archive photos as well as some personal photos from my family members who like millions of others, fought for our freedom only to never return home.

You can order Lest We Forget: A Concise Companion to the First World War from Amazon.com in Kindle for $5.13and paperback for $9.99 and Amazon.co.uk in Kindle for £2.99 and paperback for £6.99 and other Amazons around the world.  I am also happy to write a dedication to anyone who wants one, just let me know,  though I’d have to charge shipping fee for that.  Please, do leave a review if you buy a copy.  They are like gold dust to independent authors.

If anyone would like to review this or any other of my books, please let me know!