"Stolen Lives" - Andrew Hamilton and Alan Reed

[Tom Morgan]

I just finished reading this excellent new book, subtitled Individual Tragedies of the Great War. Here's the review I just posted on my site:

Stolen Lives - Individual Tragedies of the Great war

Andrew Hamilton & Alan Reed

This is the second book by these writers, following on from their excellent account of the Christmas Truce, Meet at Dawn, Unarmed. For that book, the authors had their primary source material ready to hand in the form of the diaries and letters of Andrew Hamilton's grandfather. This time, they have had to spread their net further, and they have come up with some fascinating material.

Stolen Lives is a series of portraits of lives cut short by the war. It's a vivid reminder that every one who lost his or her life in the war was a real person with loved ones, with a personal history and with hopes for a future, better life after the upheaval of the conflict.

The subjects of 'Stolen Lives' are all buried or commemorated on the Western Front, and the accounts are conveniently grouped according to location, with maps for each, so that the book, as well as being an account of the subjects' lives and deaths, is also a convenient handbook for battlefield visitors who would like to visit the graves and memorials.

The main value of the book is the amount of deep research which has been carried out. There are familiar names among the subjects, but there is lots of new information which hasn't appeared anywhere else. For example, there is one famous photograph of Staff Nurse Nellie Spindler which is used in just about every published account of her life. The authors haven't used this photograph, because they have found three others. This kind of new material makes the book extremely readable even for those who have already heard of the subjects.

The fifty subjects came from a variety of backgrounds, social strata and countries. There are the privileged and the poor, those who were already famous during their lifetimes and those who are still little-known today. There are male and female, brave and frightened and even a little dog.

This review can't close without a mention of the actual, physical book itself, which is produced to very high standards. It has hard covers, glossy paper, photographs on almost every one of its 340 pages and colour used throughout. It is made to last and won't fall apart if taken out onto the battlefields and used as reference material “in the field”. It's a credit to all who were involved – a beautiful object in its own right and a triumph of self-publishing.

STOLEN LIVES Individual Tragedies of the Great War
Andrew Hamilton and Alan Reed
Dene House Publishing, 2014
340 pages
ISBN 978-0-9561820-2-9
£25 from Dene House Publishing at www.meetatdawnunarmed.co.uk (with free postage if purchased here)
Also available at www.amazon.co.uk

[AlanCurragh]

Chris Baker has posted a very favourable review on Amazon - looks like a book worth getting