> Skip to content
  • Published: 13 November 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241972199
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 464
Categories:

1914

The Days Of Hope



The history of 1914 is not so much the story of a war as of an army

In this vivid account of the first months of the First World War, Lyn Macdonald draws on personal accounts of surviving veterans, bringing to life the disillusionment, the questioning and the heroism of the men of the British Army.

The officers and men of 1914 were prepared to fight and ready to lay down their lives because it was their job. These men believed they were fighting the War to end War.

  • Published: 13 November 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241972199
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 464
Categories:

About the author

Lyn MacDonald

Over the past twenty years Lyn Macdonald has established a popular reputation as an author and historian of the First World War. Her books are They Called It Passchendaele, an account of the Passchendaele campaign in 1917; The Roses of No Man's Land, a chronicle of the war from the neglected viewpoint of the casualties and the medical teams who struggled to save them; Somme, a history of the legendary and horrifying battle that has haunted the minds of succeeding generations; 1914, a vivid account of the first months of the war and winner of the 1987 Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award; 1914-1918: Voices and Images of the Great War, an illuminating account of the many different aspects of the war; and 1915: The Death of Innocence, a brilliant evocation of the year that saw the terrible losses of Aubers Ridge, Loos, Neuve Chapelle, Ypres and Gallipoli.

Her most recent book, To the Last Man: Spring 1918, has been published by Viking. All are based on the accounts of eyewitnesses and survivors, told in their own words, and cast a unique light on the First World War. 

Also by Lyn MacDonald

See all

Praise for 1914

Once again Lyn Macdonald has collected an extraordinary mass of original accounts, some by old soldiers, some in the form of diaries and journals, even by French civilians . . . Her research has been vast, and in result is triumphant

Tablet

These poignant voices from the past conjure up a lost innocence as well as a lost generation

Piers Brendon, Mail on Sunday

A mammoth, vivid compendium of the first months of the war . . . What Lyn Macdonald captures is the extraordinary resilience of the British regulars faced with the brutal shattering of their expectations

Daily Mail

Powerful and beautifully researched. A mind-numbing, heart-breaking book that should be alongside the field marshal's baton in every subaltern's kitbag

Punch