The Quick and the Dead: Fallen Soldiers and Their Families in the Great War

(Paperback)

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Description

At 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. Few people remained unscathed. The Quick and the Dead pays tribute to the families who were left behind while their husbands, fathers and sons went off to fight, and the generations that followed. Through a unique collection of more than fifty interviews, private diaries and a remarkable collection of unpublished letters written by the soldiers to their families back home, The Quick and the Dead is a history of those who are commonly forgotten and neglected when the fallen are remembered on Armistice Day.

Reviews

Superb ... Shattering for its wealth of tiny heartbreaking truths * Daily Telegraph *
Incredibly moving ... Remarkable * Daily Express *
A moving account of the emotional, physical and financial hardships suffered by the families of the fallen. It provides a poignant memorial to what one relative called the "heart hunger" caused by the loss of a loved one in battle * Sunday Times *
An engrossing insight into the human cost through the memories of some of the last of those children * Glasgow Herald *

Author Bio

Richard van Emden has interviewed over 270 veterans of the Great War and has written twelve books on the subject including The Trench, and The Last Fighting Tommy (both top ten bestsellers). He has also worked on more than a dozen television programmes on the First World War, including Prisoners of the Kaiser, Veterans, Britain's Last Tommies, the award winning Roses of No Man's Land and Britain's Boy Soldiers and A Poem for Harry.