Hellfire Corner Bookshelf

I receive many requests for advice on suitable guide-books or general reading matter on the subject of the Great War and I try to help whenever I can.  I know that interest in the events of 1914-1918 is increasing, and so is the number of new books on the subject.

The Hellfire Corner Bookshelf  is in two parts:-

Book Reviews
In this section you can read reviews of the latest books on the Great War, which have been sent to Hellfire Corner by publishers and authors.

Tom Morgan's Favourites
These are the books which I wouldn't be without, or which I refer to often, or which I think are the best of their kind.

BEFORE ENDEAVOURS FADE
Rose E. B. Coombs M.B.E.

This is the original must-have guidebook to the Western Front. Within its pages is the distilled experience of a remarkable lady who devoted her private and professional life to the study of the Great War. There are detailed itineraries with maps and hundreds of photographs, to help the visitor find his or her way around the Western Front. The attention to detail is remarkable - in the section on the Somme Battlefields, for example, Rose Coombs refers  not only to the biggest of all memorials, the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, but also to the 24-inch-high memorial to one Company of Royal Engineers near High Wood.  I read this book to pieces - it literally fell apart - for years before I made my first visit to the areas it describes, and learned so much from it.

The latest (1994) edition is the seventh.

Rose E. B. Coombs was Special Collections Officer (with special responsibility for the Great War) at the Imperial War Museum, London.  She died in January, 1991. A walk around the ramparts of Ypres is named after her.

THE FIRST DAY ON THE SOMME
Martin Middlebrook

Another first-of-its-kind classic. In this, the first of his books to be published, Martin Middlebrook gives a very detailed account of the first day of the Battle of the Somme - July 1st., 1916. It broke new ground because of the author's method of research. He contacted literally hundreds of people who were actually there, and pieced together his story of the events of the First Day from their memories of what happened to them. The book covers the whole of the Somme battle front and as well as telling the story of the tragic opening day of the battle, it gives a meaningful introduction to the places which figured so prominently in the later stages.  Remember - the battle started on July 1st., but didn't end until November. There are excellent appendices, containing useful statistics.

THE SOMME BATTLEFIELDS
Martin and Mary Middlebrook

An extremely detailed battlefield guide, based on the knowledge of people and places gained through Martin and Mary Middlebrook's 20-year-long experience of visiting the Somme. Their brief in producing this book was to give details of every  battle and battlefield in the Somme "Departement" of France, from Crecy, in 1346, to the two World Wars.

Naturally, most of the the book refers to the Great War. An excellent guide to the battlefields, monuments and cemeteries of the Somme area, with lots of photographs and maps to help the battlefield pilgrim find the places mentioned. Excellent for the armchair pilgrim, too.

THE WESTERN FRONT THEN AND NOW
FLANDERS THEN AND NOW
THE SOMME THEN AND NOW
John Giles

John Giles. founder of the Western Front Association, conceived the idea for this trilogy of photographic "then and now" books. He produced "Flanders Then and Now" in 1970, followed by "The Somme Then and Now" in 1977. Both books appeared in new editions around 1986. The final book "The Western Front Then and Now" appeared in 1992 and John Giles read and approved the proofs just a few days before his death in 1991. Each book includes the "then and now" photographs, of course, plus John Giles's own thoughts and accounts of what happened in each place.

The trilogy is a fitting tribute to a man whose main interest was in what happened to ordinary people in those extraordinary times.

HER PRIVATES WE
THE MIDDLE PARTS OF FORTUNE
Frederic Manning

These are two titles for what is essentially the same book. Frederic Manning, who was born in Sydney, Australia, came to Britain and joined the army as a private in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, serving on the Somme and in Flanders. After the war, he wrote his novel "The Middle Parts of Fortune" and released it in 1929 in a private edition limited to 520 copies. A year later, the book was published in an expurgated version (minus some of the real soldiers' bad language) under the title "The Middle Parts of Fortune" by "Private 19022."  Manning's name did not appear on the cover of his book until 1943, eight years after his death. It was not until 1977 that Manning's original text, under its original title, "The Middle Parts of Fortune" was published.

The book starts with one of the brutal offensives at the beginning of the Battle of the Somme and ends with another attack towards the end of the Somme battles. The main part is about the period in between.  It isn't a book about war, but a book about soldiers and above all a book about friends. Quite simply, it's a masterpiece. The greatest piece of writing to come out of the Great War. If I were some kind of Cultural Dictator, I would make everyone read it.

"It is the finest and noblest book of men in war that I have ever read."  -  Ernest Hemingway.

"No praise can be too sheer for this book - it justifies every heat of praise."  -  T. E. Lawrence.

This page first published to the Web and Copyright - Tom Morgan. January 26th., 1988.

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