''Forgotten Voices of the Great War'' is a collection of interviews with people who lived through the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

.The book is part of the

Imperial War Museum Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military ...

's oral archive. In 1960, the Imperial War Museum began a momentous and important task. A team of academics, archivists and volunteers set about tracing WWI veterans and interviewing them at length in order to record the experiences of ordinary individuals in war. The IWM aural archive has become the most important archive of its kind in the world. Authors have occasionally been granted access to the vaults, but digesting the thousands of hours of footage is a monumental task. Author Max Arthur puts the interviews into chronological and campaign order, and provides some context about the events that surround the memories. The book includes testimonies from Harry Patch, Philip Neame,

Horace Birks Major General Horace Leslie Birks CB DSO (7 May 1897 – 25 March 1985) was a senior officer of the British Army who saw active service during both the First World War and the Second World War, where he commanded the 10th Armoured Division. Mi ...

Edmund Blunden Edmund Charles Blunden (1 November 1896 – 20 January 1974) was an English poet, author, and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was als ...

, Douglas Wimberley,

Mabel Lethbridge Mabel Florence Lethbridge BEM (7 July 1900 – 14 July 1968) was a 20th-century English writer and business woman. She was the youngest person at the time to receive the British Empire Medal, an award affiliated to the Order of the British Empir ...

, Reginald Leonard Haine, Edward Spears,

Godfrey Buxton Barclay Godfrey Buxton MC (7 January 1895 –1986) was a casualty of World War I, who compensated for his inability to follow the family tradition of missionary service by founding and running missionary training colleges. Buxton was the son of ...

, Henry Williamson,

Tom Adlam Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Edwin Adlam VC (21 October 1893 – 28 May 1975) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealt ...

, Cecil Arthur Lewis, Montagu Cleeve, Charles Carrington, Keith Officer and Norman Demuth. Now, forty years on, the Imperial War Museum has at last given author Max Arthur and his team of researchers unlimited access to the complete WWI tapes. These are the forgotten voices of an entire generation of survivors of the Great War. The resulting book is an important and compelling history of WWI in the words of those who experienced it. This book has also been dramatized for the stage by the playwright Malcolm McKay.

External links

Forgotten Voices website

Imperial War Museum website

2002 non-fiction books Personal accounts of World War I History books about World War I Oral history books Collection of the Imperial War Museum Books of interviews British non-fiction books Ebury Publishing books {{WWI-memoir-stub