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  • Published: 15 October 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241990728
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $27.99

The Roses of No Man's Land




'Macdonald writes splendidly and touchingly of the work of the nurses and doctors who fought their battle on the Western Front' Sunday Telegraph

On the face of it', writes Lyn Macdonald, 'no one could have been less equipped for the job than these gently nurtured girls who walked straight out of the Edwardian drawing-rooms into the manifest horrors of the First World War...'

Yet the volunteer nurses rose magnificently to the occasion. In leaking tents and draughty huts they fought another war, a war against agony and death, as men lay suffering from the pain of unimaginable wounds or diseases we can now cure almost instantly.

It was here that young doctors frantically forged new medical techniques - of blood transfusion, dentistry, psychiatry and plastic surgery - in an attempt to save soldiers shattered in body or spirit. And it was here that women achieved a quiet but permanent revolution, by proving beyond question they could do anything.

All of this is superbly captured in The Roses's of No Man's Land, a panorama of hardship, disillusion and despair, yet also of endurance and supreme courage.

  • Published: 15 October 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241990728
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $27.99

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. 

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Praise for The Roses of No Man's Land

The tale is allowed to tell itself without any frontal assault on the emotions, and is all the more stirring thereby

Observer