Richard van Emden

Harry Patch, born June 17, 1898, was the last British soldier alive to have fought in the trenches of the First World War. From his vivid memories of an Edwardian childhood, the horror of the Great War and fighting in the mud during the Battle of Passchendaele, working on the home front in the Second World War, and fame in later life as a veteran,...

The Life of Harry Patch, Last Veteran of the Trenches, 1898-2009Harry Patch, the last British soldier alive to have fought in the trenches of the First World War, is one of very few people who can directly recall the horror of that conflict.Harry vividly remembers his childhood in the Somerset countryside of Edwardian England. He left school in...

Albert John ('Jack') Martin was a thirty-two-year-old clerk at the Admiralty when he was called up to serve in the army in September 1916. These diaries, written in secret, hidden from his colleagues and only discovered by his family after his return home, present the Great War with heartbreaking clarity, written in a voice as compelling and...

Fallen Soldiers and Their Families in the Great WarAt the end of the First World War more than 192,000 wives had lost their husbands, and nearly 400,000 children had lost their fathers. A further half a million children had lost one or more siblings. Appallingly, one in eight wives died within a year of receiving news of their husband's death....

The Great War through Veterans' EyesNovember 2008 sees the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War, 'the war to end all wars' that still haunts and fascinates in equal measure. Richard van Emden's new book tells that story as never before through the words and pictures of the men who were there. The Soldier's War...

Soldiers and their Animals in the Great WarFor soldiers in the Great War, going over the top was a comparatively rare event; much more frequently, they were bored and lonely and missing their families at home. Needing an outlet for their affection, many found it in the animal kingdom. Tommy's Ark looks at the war through the eyes of the...