A war in words : the First World War in diaries and letters

Departing radically from traditional histories, A WAR IN WORDS tells the story of the First World War on a compelling, human scale through the letters and diaries of its participants -- whether combatants, eyewitnesses or victims.

This was a young person's war and these people record their experiences with all the immediacy and passion of youth.

They talk to us directly from within the war itself and from all sides of the conflict -- from the testimony of a Serbian teenager, one of Franz Ferdinand's assassins, to the final entry from a French soldier as he revisits a battlefield in 1919, realising he and the rest of the world have changed irrevocably.

Most of these letters and diaries have never been published in English before.

They were uncovered during extensive research across twenty-eight countries for the major ten-part series THE FIRST WORLD WAR, broadcast on Channel 4 in autumn 2003.

The series will introduce many of the characters who appear in this book and will, like the book, recount the complex history of the war though the lives of the individuals caught up in it.