On Fame's Eternal Camping Ground Book

(Reference: BBJ201)

WHEN, after the Great War of 1914-1918, the Imperial War Graves Commission began its immense task of erecting headstones to mark the graves of Britain's dead, and those of the armed forces of her Empire, the next-of-kin of the deceased were offered the opportunity to have a personal epitaph added to the official information inscribed on each stone. The response from the bereaved families was extraordinary, bringing forth words which ranged from the homespun to the resoundingly lyrical and embraced a wide variety of sentiments.

Based on five years' research, this new book by Trefor Jones presents a study of more than 1,500 epitaphs on headstones in the cemeteries of Belgium and France . These tributes to young British, Australian, Canadian, Newfoundlander and South African sons, husbands and brothers of that lost generation, buried far from home, provide an eloquent and moving demonstration of the power and beauty of language.

Although certain to interest students of the Great War, and the Western Front in particular, the book is not 'about' the war and will appeal equally to the general reader. It offers a compelling insight into the attitudes of the era, and a remarkable variety of responses to the loss of young men cut down in that unimaginably awful conflict, whose remains lie buried in the foreign soil on which they fought and died.

 
ISBN 978 0 9527458 2 2
235x170mm hardback with dust jacket.
224pp + 8pp colour
B/w illustrations throughout.

Price £22.95