Horrors of the Somme revealed in new book of soldiers’ letters and photos; Richard Van Emden’s new book, The Somme, has been making headlines once again with extensive coverage in the Express over the weekend.

This is the first book on the battle in which the soldiers’ own photographs have been used to illustrate both the campaign’s extraordinary comradeship and its carnage, written by prominent Great War author and expert, Richard Van Emden.

The book was published in hardback in April 2016 and is now available in paperback, Kindle and ePub.

This guidebook has taken 20 years to mature from its first edition to this new ‘Definitive’ edition, each time being updated and expanded. It is a legacy that should be on every bookshelf. The book is based upon over 30 years of traveling and writing about battlefields by Major and Mrs Holt, who are credited with having started the modern era of battlefield tours and were awarded the Somme Centenary Medal for their work in ‘opening the doors to the battlefields’ with their books. This is not merely a guide book, nor a history book, but it is brimming with human interest stories of veterans’ experiences, tales of bravery, comradeship, natural terror, literary illusions to poets who experienced the battles.

‘It is not always necessary to hire a personal guide to make sense of the battlefields and what they have to offer a visitor. The Holts have covered the Western Front with a number of comprehensive guidebooks. For those who want to visit the battlefield without the burden of too many books on the subject, this one will suffice. There is a good narrative on the battle itself and numerous short vignettes about people, events and places. The book also gives useful tips on where to stay and eat and how to make the best of a visit.’

– Guards magazine

An essential travelling companion for anyone visiting the Somme battlefields of 1916, Paul Reed‘s classic book Walking the Somme brings the visitor not only to the places where the armies clashed but to the landscape of monuments, cemeteries and villages that make the Somme battlefield so moving to explore.

From Gommecourt, Serre, Beaumont-Hamel and Thiepval to Montauban, High Wood, Delville Wood and Flers, he guides the walker across the major sites associated with the fighting. These are now features of the peaceful Somme countryside. In total there are 16 walks, including a new one tracing the operations around Mametz Wood, and all the original walks have been fully revised and brought up to date.

This amazing book is an incredible resource of all the War Diaries of every single unit that went into action on 1 July 1916. The book examines the battlefield from Gommecourt in the North to Montauban in the South, so covering the whole Somme front. For each unit there are some notes and then an exact reproduction of the diary. Many units lost so many officers and men that in some cases the information is sparse but others have long and fascinating accounts. Maps in the book help to make sense of where units were, and there are some good illustrations. An absolutely invaluable resource for family historians and battlefield visitors who want to have the detail of events a century ago in one handy volume.

Highly recommended!

– Somme 1916 blog

This book gives a good overview of the battle and includes material which was part of a WW1 archive of material Dr Peter Liddle was working on when he originally wrote the book in the 1980s, so many rare and previously unseen accounts and photographs. The ‘reconsidered’ part of the book is as Liddle examines the battle and considers it a victory, which in the 1980s was not a popular view – although he concedes it was certainly a costly victory.

A good book and it is good to see it back in print.

– Somme 1916 blog

This is one of the most useful Great War books I have come across in some time. Using the book you can look up the details of a unit, perhaps your grandfather’s battalion, and it then takes you to the relevant pages where you can see with text and via maps where they fought. This means you can quickly and simply put together a framework of where a man was on the Somme, which normally would take some time. Superb companion for those visiting the battlefields for Somme100 and those wanting to research where their ancestor fought.

Highly recommended!

– Somme 1916 blog