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38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic book - absolutely brilliant and revelatory, 6 Jan 2006
By A Customer
I bought this book a few weeks ago and upon receipt wanted to write a review there and then – it looked that good! Having just finished it I can now comment. What can I say about this wonderful book that hasn’t been covered before in the professional reviews given by acknowledged experts? Well, I can only give my opinion on what I have seen. I have been studying the western front for over ten years now and have made numerous visits to the battlefields. This book shows them in a completely different light and is revelatory in the utmost. Where many people would imagine there was a sea of mud and shell holes, there are church spires, fields of flowers and often little to show that ‘the war to end all wars’ is going on. Also, to see how the ‘front line’ itself varied through the different geographical and geological areas it passed through from the North Sea down to the Somme is fascinating. Some areas had trenches, some breastworks – it all depended on the ground conditions and water table. What jumped out at me most in reading this book was how different parts of the front varied from each other. There was always fighting in and around the Ypres salient, yet just a few miles away there was a ‘live and let live’ policy and to read of one officer being so bored with his trench duty that he made a garden in the front line trenches and also hopped on his bicycle and cycled down to view the aftermath of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was enlightening to say the least! The vast amount of personal testimony, diaries and letters in this book add immeasurably to the work and provide an explanation to the backdrop of the panoramas. The work involved in cataloguing these panoramas is prodigious (8 years!) and coupled with the 370+ pages of writing, explaining everything you can see and what it was used for you certainly get an incredible amount of information by the author. The two CD-ROMs containing over 200 panoramas work fantastically and it is such a pleasure to be able to zoom in on images, previously unseen to this generation, and get some idea of what the men who fought and died in these areas could see. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. For those interested in the Great War it is a must buy. You don’t even have to be an expert to appreciate the detail and attention that has gone into this work. Anyone could pick it up and read bits that would amaze them. Simply incredible, SO rewarding and without doubt the best new book I have seen on the Great War in the past few years. £35 for this – a total bargain.
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by Peter Barton
by Antony Beevor
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