The sideshows

Although Britain's primary contribution to the First World War was made on the Western Front, her forces served all over the world.

In this final volume of Sutton's benchmark series, founding author Gerald Gliddon covers all the 'sideshows' from 1914 to 1918 in which Victoria Crosses were won beyond the Western Front and Gallipoli.

He tells the stories of forty-six men who won the VC fighting in other areas of British or Allied interest.

Thus the book covers four men serving in East or West Africa, fourteen in Egypt/Palestine, two in India, four in Italy, and lastly twenty in Mesopotamia, a country later known as Iraq.

Naturally with the British discovery of vast oil deposits in the Persian Gulf just before the war, this part of the world became increasingly important.

Turkey and its German ally were particularly keen to get their hands on these vital oilfields and the problems of ownership still reverberate ninety years later.