The First World War Retold

Though the Imperial War Museum in London is one of the most popular destinations for tourists and residents in all of the city, few people realize that it was founded in the midst of World War I. As realization of the scale, and the costs, of the war grew, the War Cabinet approved a proposal to create a national war museum to collect and display artifacts that would tell the story of the war as experienced by soldier and civilian alike—and, in particular, would testify to the sacrifices the war demanded.

A century later, IWM continues to fulfill that role it has held since its founding in 1917. And now, with centennial commemorations of World War I well underway, the time is right for a fresh new look at that war as well. Paul Cornish provides it here with an accessible, richly illustrated account of the war from start to finish. Building the story around IWM’s collections, the book presents events as they happened through quotations from diaries, letters, oral histories, and more; those accounts are amplified by images of countless objects from the war, from items that would have been in a soldier’s kit to paintings created by war artists. Emotive, painful, and surprisingly immediate, this account of the experience, and losses, of World War I will introduce a new generation to this landmark conflict.