First World War Books

In 1914, despite being forbidden, many a Kiwi soldier's kitbag included a portable camera known as 'The Soldier's Kodak'. The images they recorded form the basis of this poignant collection of our soldiers from the First World War. In a major research...

A personal history of the friendship between the great war poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, 'Soldiers Don't Go Mad' tells the story of psychiatry, the traumatic effects of war, and the healing properties of poetry. Second Lieutenant Wilfred...

The Ypres salient 'was the favourite battle ground of the devil and his minions' wrote one returned serviceman after the First World War. Few who fought in the infamous third battle of Ypres now known as Passchendaele in 1917 would have...

The internment camp on Rottnest Island, established for enemy aliens from Germany and Austria-Hungary during World War I, can be considered a historical oddity, not least because Indigenous prisoners were also held captive there by Australian soldiers...

The August Offensive or ‘Anzac Breakout’ at Gallipoli was an attempt to break the stalemate of the campaign. It saw some of the bloodiest fighting since the landing as Commonwealth and Turkish troops fought desperate battles at Lone Pine, German...

This is the extraordinary story of the engagement between 250 young Australians, who enlisted in 1915 and died in the Battle of Fromelles of 1916, their families, and three British scientists.   In 2009, the bodies of these 250 soldiers were...

…Well dear Jim it breaks my heart to write this letter. Our dear [brother] was killed yesterday morning at 5.30. The bullet killed him instantly and he never spoke a word. I had just left him and gone down the trench to see the other lads when I was...

The Tree of Heaven follows the fortunes of the Harrison family as the children grow up in the shadow of the First World War and Dorothy's brothers go off, one by one, to the trenches, while she becomes involved with the suffrage movement, and later joins...

What does Australia's military history reveal about us?In Beyond The Broken Years fifty years after The Broken Years, Bill Gammage's classic on World War One soldiers, was published provocative military historian Peter Stanley argues why it's vital for...

"Irresistible . . . My aviation title of the year." - Rowland White"Stupendously brilliant . . . Completely addictive." - James Holland"The most explosive book about aircraft ever." - Jim Moir, aka Vic ReevesFrom the terror and exhilaration of First...

**Shortlisted, 2024 NSW Premier's History Awards, Anzac Memorial Trustees Military History Prize**On 9 August 1918, at Chipilly Spur overlooking the Somme River, an entire British Army Corps is held up by German machine gunners.The battle has raged for...

As the devastation of German-occupied Belgium awakened Britain to the horrors of the Great War, a group of English cartoonists responded to these events with characteristic black humor. Among the most inventive responses was advertising artist John...

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, both suffering from shell shock, were sent to convalesce at Craiglockhart hospital in Edinburgh in 1917. Owen, who referred to himself as the 'poet's poet' was unpublished at the time. It was the influence and...

At Scapa Flow on 21 June 1919, there occurred an event unique in naval history. The German High Seas Fleet, one of the most formidable ever built was deliberately sent to the bottom of the sea at the British Grand Fleet's principal anchorage at Orkney by...

In the early hours of 26 February 1918, the British hospital ship Glenart Castle steamed into the Bristol Channel, heading for France to pick up wounded men from the killing fields of the Western Front. On board was 32-year-old Australian nurse, Edith...

This book contributes to the growing literature on the role of the British non-settler empire in the Great War by exploring the service of the Cypriot Mule Corps on the Salonica Front, and after the war in Constantinople. Varnava encompasses all aspects...

The August Offensive was the last attempt by the Allied forces to break the stalemate with the Turkish defenders that had developed since the Anzac landings in late April 1915. It resulted in some of the bloodiest battles on the Gallipoli peninsula which...

Young nations do the bidding of empire and send their youth to a faraway war. Their soldiers arrive with a reputation for rebelling against authority and ill-discipline. They fight in an ill-fated campaign, under foreign command, against a well dug in...

Discover the key battles, tactics, technologies and turning points of the First World War - the epic conflict that was supposed to be "the war to end all wars".  Combining authoritative, exciting text and bold explanatory graphics The World War I...