The best books on the home front, the war front, and life as a POW during World War One

It is very important to me to write about the home front in World War One with as much accuracy as is possible at over one hundred years’ distance. Kate Adie’s brilliant, readable, and engaging book is full of the kind of details a novelist thrives on.

Written with her authority and expert eye, I couldn’t put it down. It provided me with ideas and inspiration, along with Kate’s unique perspective and knowledge.

As I read, I felt I was in the hands of a reliable author whose take on the social and political context as it affected women during World War One was credible and true. It was an invaluable resource for me as I carried out my research.

Although my novel is set mainly on the home front, it starts in no man’s land and the trenches and returns to the front a few more times to demonstrate how close the links were between the home and war fronts. I wanted these passages to be realistic and needed facts, details, and knowledge from which to write.

I read John Lewis-Stempel’s meticulously researched book because it focuses on the experiences of Subalterns—young men who were made officers while they were often still at school. I found it moving, harrowing, and shocking—a book that stayed with me because it showed the impossibility of performing that role and surviving more than a few weeks. It proved invaluable for the first chapter of the book which is entitled The Subaltern.

I read this book to make sure that I captured the experiences of returning PoWs accurately, neither downplaying their suffering nor missing its essential elements.

John Lewis-Stempel’s superb book is full of diary entries and letters from British PoWs detailing their harsh, barren lives in prison camps. I knew little about this topic before reading and was shocked at the way privates were routinely used as slave labour while officers were often treated to a sit-down dinner by their captors.

The passages covering the return of veterans from the PoW camps were particularly moving, as I learned that many of the soldiers who survived until victory was declared were too ill to make it home and died in the camps, in hospital, or en route.

The book was invaluable for my research.

I wanted to read an authoritative book about the social, political, and historical context on the home front during World War One. I settled on this book by a senior historian at The Imperial War Museum to learn about the challenges facing civilians from an academic, learned perspective.

I enjoyed its wide lens as it focused on rationing, zeppelin bombing raids, the changing role of women, and government propaganda. I appreciated its facts and figures and while I would have welcomed more of the author’s thoughts or personality appearing on the page every now and then, I gained so much from reading it that I am including it here.

I love this book.

I bought it from the bookshop at Hedd Wyn’s Eryri/Snowdonia museum-home Yr Ysgwrn, and I have returned to the poems and beautiful photos in it many times.

The poems are presented in Cymraeg and English, alongside evocative imagery of the area where Hedd Wyn lived. It’s a collection of poems that I find haunting, beautiful and simple, made all the sadder for the fact that Hedd Wyn, an established poet who had won several poetry awards, died within the first two hours of his first battle in July 1917 but went on to posthumously win the Black Chair at the National Eisteddfod that Autumn.

Truly moving and exquisite poetry and images.