Memoirs of the Great War

Survivors of a Kind, by Brian Bond

In Survivors of a Kind, Brian Bond, one of our most distinguished modern military historians, has written an absorbing and affectionate study of the military memoirs of the first world war, bearing all the authority of a life- time’s work on the British Army. With some of the 20-odd names in this book the reader will be familiar: Siegfried Sassoon’s and Robert Graves’ sworks have stayed in print, and it is fair to say that most British people’s views of the Great War today are largely shaped by Goodbye to All That and, if not by Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man or Siegfried’s Journey, at least by poems like ‘Base Details’. Bond draws readers’ attention to John (later Lord) Reith’s Wearing Spurs, less well known than his public career — as is Anthony Eden’s Another World, describing his first 20 years of life, to 1917.