Hell on Earth Paperback – Illustrated, 26 Mar. 2014

This is a remarkable account of life in the trenches during the First World War. Memoirs which were discovered in an attic after the writer had passed away. Well worth a read.

Typesetting let it down hugely. Whoever did the typing should be shot. It's really quite disgraceful. It's a huge shame, as the diary entries themselves are very interesting. Whoever put the book together from the manuscripts gave the job nowhere near the care and attention to detail it deserved and clearly the whole thing wasn't even proofread. It's a crying shame. It has all the appearances of being rushed to get it out to a deadline. You'll get a migraine from all the stupid spelling mistakes, missing words and sentences that disappear. A very amateur attempt at putting a book together. Pity they didn't leave it to the professionals and have a resulting book that the family could be proud of. As it is it's just a sad mess.

The memoir of an English warrior-clergyman in the ranks of the Artists' Rifles, & as a commissioned officer with the 1/8th Middlesex Regiment from 1915 to 1918, encompassing glimpses into the Western Front's trench warfare battles of World War 1 at Loos, the Somme, Arras and 3rd Ypres, along with perceptive vignettes revealing the odd dislocation of the war upon individuals caught in its orbit. Very well written, arresting, funny in equal measure & intermittently horrifying.A self-published work by the author's son at his own expense, who apparently could find no publishing house willing to print it commercially, which if true is strange given the text's inherent high literary quality. It provides the best description that I've read in print of the nightmarishly surreal scenes of the fighting within Passchendaele's depths.