Showing titles in World War I

When they met at a motorcycle club in 1912, Elsie Knocker was a 30-year-old motorcycling divorcee dressed in bottle-green Dunhill leathers, and Mairi Chisholm was a brilliant 18-year old mechanic, living at home and borrowing tools from her brother. Little did they know that theirs was to become one of the most extraordinary stories of the First World War.

A British soldier walked over to the German front line to deliver newspapers; British women married to Germans became ‘enemy aliens’ in their own country; a high-ranking British POW discussed his own troops’ heroism with the Kaiser on the battlefield. Just three amazing stories of contact between the opposing sides in the Great War that eminent historian Richard van Emden has unearthed - incidents that show brutality, great humanity, and above all the bizarre nature of a conflict between two nations with long-standing ties of kinship and friendship.

At the end of the First World War more than 192,000 wives had lost their husbands, and nearly 400,000 children had lost their fathers. A further half a million children had lost one or more siblings. Appallingly, one in eight wives died within a year of receiving news of their husband's death. Few people remained unscathed and the effects of the conflict are still with us.

The Beecheys were a close-knit family, eight brothers and five sisters under the loving eye of their widowed mother, Amy. As the First World War raged across Europe and beyond, the brothers were one-by-one swept up into its devastating path.

In the First World War of 1914–1918, thousands of boys across Australia and New Zealand lied about their age, forged a parent’s signature and left to fight on the other side of the world. Though some were as young as thirteen, they soon found they could die as well as any man. Like Peter...

At the end of World War I, Canada was poised on the brink of social revolution. At least that is what many Canadians, inspired by the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917, hoped - and others dreaded. Seeing Reds tells the story of this turbulent period in Canadian history during the winter of 1918-19, when a fearful government led by Prime Minister Robert Borden tried to suppress radical political activity by branding legitimate labour leaders as "Bolsheviks" and "Reds".

Chris Tarrant and his father Basil were very close, they played sport together, watched sport together and shared the same sense of humour. Chris loved and admired his father but it was only after his death he realised that he hardly knew him at all …Basil Avery Tarrant grew up in 1920s Reading, where the smell of beer and biscuits from the local factories filled the air. He worked as an administrator in a local factory and spent his Saturday nights down at the music halls.

Armistice is a three-part series from Conversations bringing to life the stories of Australians who went to the Western Front and connecting them to the family folklore of their descendants. The Great War came to an end a century ago, with the signing of the armistice between the Allies and the German Empire, but its aftershocks reverberate through so many Australian families, even now. So many of the men who went to the front didn’t come back, and those who did were changed forever.

Winner of the 2022 award for biography from the American Society of Journalists and Authors The fascinating story of how the three most influential American progressives of the early twentieth century split over America’s response to World War I. In the early years of the twentieth century...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'There was hardly a household in the land', writes Lyn Macdonald, 'there was no trade, occupation, profession or community, which was not represented in the thousands of innocent enthusiasts who made up the ranks of Kitchener's Army before the Battle of the Somme...'...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Four years of war turned Ypres into a ghost town. Not a leaf grew on a tree. Scarcely one stone stood upon another. From the battered ramparts the eye swept clean across a field of rubble to the swamp-lands beyond . . .' The Third Battle of Ypres, ending in a...

Brought to you by Penguin THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE BBC DRAMA THE CRIMSON FIELD '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 Edwardian drawing rooms into the manifest horrors of the First...

You might already know that World War I was the Great War, and be familiar with its images; muddy trenches, poison gas, and a no-man's land of craters and barbed wire. But when it comes to understanding its causes, why it dragged on for four years, and how it set the stage for World War II, you...

"Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography" by Robert Graves is a seminal work that vividly captures the harrowing experiences of a young British officer during World War I.

The Second Battle of Krithia has existed largely in the shadows of the bigger Gallipoli story. It is, however, one of the most poignant and tragic tales of World War I. The fascinating story has been brought to light at last by bestselling military historian Mat McLachlan, author of The Cowra...

It’s March 1918, and World War I is raging in Europe. In the trenches in northern France, a group of British officers, led by the war-weary Captain Stanhope, ready themselves for a major German attack while facing their worst fears. R.C. Sherriff drew on his own experiences in World War One to create the play, which premiered in 1928 and is now considered one of the preeminent works about the horrors of war.

Chelmsford 123 was originally a two-series sitcom set in Roman Britain that brought memorable characters, strong gags and hilarious storylines to the small screen. Using the original scripts as foundation, these four episodes contain all-new material written by Rory McGrath and Jimmy Mulville and are perfect for both fans of the series as well as anyone looking for a bit of comic relief...so come back with us to AD 123 for a generous dose of historical humour.

"Dodo Wonders" is the third and final installment in the "Dodo" series by E. F. Benson. The series was rumoured to be based on Lady Asquith, though she herself claimed that she had little in common with the character of Dodo - except the splendour of her drawing-room, perhaps. The glitzy life of Lady Dodo Chesterford is abruptly interrupted by the arrival of World War I. Along with her husband and their friends, Lady Dodo is faced with the challenge of rapidly adapting to an unfamiliar and dangerous new environment.

L'Europe apprend avec consternation l'assassinat de l'archiduc François-Ferdinand à Sarajevo. Car le vieil empereur d'Autriche-Hongrie, François-Joseph, veut punir cet attentat pour rétablir l'honneur de son empire en déclin. Ainsi débute ce terrible mois de juillet, où se noue jour après jour l'invraisemblable crise diplomatique qui va conduire à une guerre que pourtant personne ne souhaite.

Winston Churchill was born in a palace and was given a funeral worthy of a king. His family had enjoyed an intimate association with the British monarchy stretching back centuries. As King Edward VIII said of him, "I have never met anyone of royal blood who exemplified in such high degree the...