Rec books about WWI?

[mightymads]

I’d like to expand my knowledge on WWI which is quite rusty, to be honest. The last time I studied anything about it properly was at school, and that was about 15 years ago. Until I read Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, it was but a historical event for me as the history program at my school wasn’t particularly strong. It was something from the textbooks, and that was all. The letters made me realise how tragic it was. They gave the sense of “immediate presence” and the taste of how it affected one particular family. So now I’d like to know more.

Comments

[rachelindeed]

I know this isn't strictly speaking an answer to your question, as it's about memory rather than history, but from 2014-2018 (the centenaries of the war), the Tower of London hosted what I thought was a stunning memorial to the casualties of WWI. Artists handcrafted 888,246 ceramic poppies - the official number of British and British colonial deaths in the war - and volunteers planted them, so that visitors could begin to visualize the lives lost:

https://youtu.be/iGVPxnxvFgU

[mightymads]

Thank you so much for the link! The poppy field is staggering.