The First World War in Photographs

It was the greatest conflict that the world had ever seen, a war that left a scar across a generation, as young men were slaughtered, maimed and psychologically damaged by powerful modern weapons and the impasse on the battlefields. It was a war that stretched from the fields of Flanders to Africa and the South Atlantic, in which the boundaries of age and class were negligible, as men were called to arms and women to the aid of the war effort. It was a war that changed the world order irrevocably, destroying the great empires of European civilization, spawning revolution and civil conflicts and, in its aftermath, laying the ground for the rise of the brutal dictatorships that were to lead the world into an even greater conflict just two decades later.
The First World War in Photographs reveals the many elements of this conflict with a collection of images taken from the archives of the Imperial War Museum that are astonishing in their clarity and impact. Every front of the conflict is represented from those familiar names of the Somme, Verdun and Ypres on the Western Front, to the frozen wastes of the Eastern Front, the beaches of Gallipoli and the many skirmishes in colonial outposts. Accompanied by the incisive and authoritative text of Richard Holmes, The FirstWorldWar in Photographs proves to be a moving testament to those who lived through the first great war and a lesson to us all looking back almost a century later.