The Beauty And The Sorrow: An intimate history of the First World War [Hardcover]

For the historian saying something new and original about the Great War is by definition a challenge of foreboding proportions. The chilling observation by Joseph Stalin that "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic" resonates particularly around this conflict with the level of carnage horrifically mind boggling and almost impossible to grasp today. There is heartfelt grief for all soldiers caught up in conflict and we think in our generation of the tragedy of the 365 British combatants who are sadly deceased as a result of the Afghanistan conflict. How then would we react today to a catastrophe like Passchendaele on the Ypres Salient where 260,000 British troops were causalities in 1917 and how would we feel to be involved in the wider contagion of a total war?

This excellent new book by Peter Englund "The Beauty And The Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War' attempts to answer the last question by charting the path of 20 people through the meltdown of 1914 -18. Englund is a talented Swedish historian and journalist. He is also the new permanent secretary of the academy which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature. His style is immensely readable and his twenty protagonists range from countries across the globe including in his own words "an Australian woman who drove a lorry for the Serbian Army; a Scotsman fighting Germans in East Africa; an Italian soldier who ended up in a Mental Asylum; a French civil servant who never saw the front; a German school girl who grew up close to the war on the eastern borders of Germany; a South American adventurer who fought for the Turks and witnessed the Armenian genocide and a Belgian fighter pilot"

This is not a straightforward history, indeed Englund describes it as "anti history". The narrative from one big battle to the next is not to be found here and many major historical figures are notable by their absence. What this book attempts to do is tell you what it was like to live through this horror and what psychological, personal and community impact that this had. As he states the aim of the book is intimacy and particularly to describe "feelings, impressions, experiences and moods." Like the English historian Huw Strachen he also ranges widely treating the Great War as a World war not a conflict confined to the Western trenches. The emphasis on the experience of women is key to the book not least the stories of Laura de Turczynowicz, a Canadian married to a Polish aristocrat in north-east Poland who finds that after the declaration of war that her family has been divided up by their nationalities. She is a British subject, her three children come under the sovereign rule of the Austro-Hungarian emperor while her partner is now free to be called up by the Russian Tsar. Suddenly what were once meaningless labels serve to define you. Equally the experiences of Florence Farmborough, an English nurse in the Russian Army is well worth seeking out as are those of Olive King, a Sydney woman who became a volunteer ambulance driver.

Englund's search for facts which are often mundane allows him to get under the skin of living through war and produce a superb tapestry of life. Who would have thought for example that the multitude of Parisian prostitutes with gonorrhoea at this time were able to charge premium rates above those girls who were clean since catching this disease would ensure that a soldier is excused a return to the front. Imagine the mixed feelings of the 22 year old Russian solider Andrei Lobanov- Rostovsky who is elected an officer by his soldiers committee in the disintegrating Tsarist army but who then discovers that "five officers of the Moscow Regiment who had been elected by their soldiers the day before had been murdered by them in the night". Overall Englund has served up a brilliant oral based history here which tells us much more about the contours of war than most straight forward narratives. His book has been a huge success in Europe and it is hoped that this is duplicated in the UK. Mere words often fail to describe the apocalypse that this generation of human being lived through but can you think of a better and more profound description of war you have you read than the words of a 12 year old German schoolgirl Elfriede Kuhr who describes it as "a ghost in grey rags, a skull with maggots crawling out of it". Where is that sixth star when you need it?

This entry makes a fresh and worthwhile contribution to the vast literature on the history of the First World War. Peter Englund has culled the diaries, memoirs and letters of 20 individuals who went through the conflict as combatants or non-combatants. None of them is famous, to my knowledge, but their stories are nonetheless fascinating. By using this narrative method the author is able to range across every geographical front and backwater in the global conflict and illuminate many different aspect of its impact on humanity, from mortality rates to romance. It is not a battlefield or campaign history, but we nonetheless learn a great deal about the progress of the war and what it was like for infantrymen, sailors and airmen, for nurses, doctors and politicians, for daughters, sisters and wives, trying to survive and make sense of what was happening to them and their loved ones. Englund is an excellent writer and his book is a poignant and vivid recreation of a terrible phase of civilisation.

The narrative form he has chosen is both a strength and a weakness. His aim is to embrace as many facets of human endeavour as possible and thereby weave a substantial tale. He does that. But it involves a considerable demand on the reader to juggle a cast of 20 diverse players, recalling who they are and where we are up to in their stories. Each 'diary' fragment is quite short, so the juggling has to be rapid. Englund does a great deal of retelling and contextualising throughout, obviously to fill in gaps in the original source material and enhance the dramatic development. Perhaps this is overdone at times, with the result that we can lose the individual 'voices' of his players. Another obvious limitation of his approach is that many small windows on a very big subject do not readily or necessarily allow us to grasp the big picture. I would argue that Englund does marvellously well in overcoming this limitation, through the strength of his prose and breadth of his humanity. Nevertheless, I sensed that he himself was not satisfied and wanted to be more complete. As a result, a very large number of footnotes have been incorporated into the text, serving as a conventional historical narrative or commentary, replete with facts and figures and anecdotes. There are interesting and useful tidbits in the footnotes but, as the book goes on, the author restlessly pursues too many incidental and tangental matters. As a result, it feels that he is losing focus on the players. The impression is reinforced by the rather abrupt way in which he farewells them at the end, which left me wondering what the book finally wanted to say. As a commentator on the war, I would say Englund can be both illuminating and biased (for instance, I detected an ungenerous feeling towards Americans).

Despite these reservations, I think 'The Beauty and the Sorrow' (surely a title too near 'The Sorrow and the Pity') is well worth reading for an intimate and deeply felt impression of total war.

Bought this as a present for my partner as he is interested in the first world war,only had it for a short while and he loves it and finds it hard to put down,would highly recommend it and its great value for the price as well