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Forgotten Voices Of The Great War

Forgotten Voices Of The Great War

In 1960, the Imperial War Museum began a momentous and important task. A team of academics, archivists and volunteers set about tracing WWI veterans and interviewing them at length in order to record the experiences of ordinary individuals in war. The IWM aural archive has become the most important archive of its kind in the world. Authors have occasionally been granted access to the vaults, but digesting the thousands of hours of footage is a monumental task.

Now, forty years on, the Imperial War Museum has at last given author Max Arthur and his team of researchers unlimited access to the complete WWI tapes. These are the forgotten voices of an entire generation of survivors of the Great War. The resulting book is an important and compelling history of WWI in the words of those who experienced it.

Reviews

  • An extraordinary and immensely moving book

    Stephen Fry

  • This extraordinary book is crammed with details, conjuring up the atmosphere of war as vividly as the frequent descriptions of appalling violence

    Daily Telegraph

  • The words of the soldiers are as fresh as if they were written yesterday ... extraordinary

    Deborah Moggach, Mail on Sunday

  • These stories are so harrowing, and their witness so precise and devastating

    Andrew Motion, The Times

  • The stories of these now long-dead vets simply jump off the page

    FHM

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About the Author

Max Arthur

Max Arthur is an author who specialises in first-hand recollections of historical events. He has worked closely with the Imperial War Museum to bring together two books in the Forgotten Voices series, Forgotten Voices of the Great War and Forgotten Voices of the Second World War. Previous titles include The Manchester United Air Crash; Above All Courage; Northern Ireland: Soldiers Talking; Men of the Red Beret; There Shall Be Wings: The RAF 1918 to the Present; The True Glory: The Royal Navy 1914 to Present. Prior to becoming a writer, he served with the Royal Air Force and for some years was an actor.

Max Arthur

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