In A Flanders Field: A Territorial Battalion at Ypres, October 1917

Written neither as a conventional biography or battalion history, this work centres on the remarkable life of Joe Waite, a boy soldier of the Great War. Though, in telling his story, the names and lives of 64 of his fallen comrades are also revealed. All were lost in just one month of fighting, during the hell that was the Third Battle of Ypres – also known as Passchendaele.

Born in a tough, working-class neighbourhood in Coventry, in the heart of the industrial Midlands, Joe’s childhood was...