From the boys who eagerly enlisted to the solemn burial of the Unknown Soldier, the Christmas truces that the generals could not prevent, the girls handing out white feathers on the streets of London, the filth, the rain, the flies and rats, the military blunders-scenes from the Great War have an almost overwhelming emotional power. Here, acclaimed historian Lyn Macdonald brings together letters, diary extracts, photographs, songs, amateur poetry, official reports, press cuttings, and eyewitness accounts of the Western Front and Gallipoli. The result is a terrifyingly vivid piece of unofficial history.