My father was in the First World War.

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

My dad was a big admirer of Sergeant York stories from the First World War.

The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power.

What can I say about the First World War, a war in which I served as an infantryman, a war I hated at the start and to which I never warmed as it proceeded?