Harper Collins Hardback - $44.99
Before World War I, little provision
was made for the burial of the war dead.
Men who fought and died across the length and breadth of the continent
were often unceremoniously dumped in mass graves. A memorial was seen as a
symbol of national humiliation and exploitation. Slowly the nation’s mood
changed, and with the end of the Battle of Waterloo came a deepening sense of
pride and responsibility to the army, and how the country’s dead should be
honoured.
When war broke out in 1914, journalist
Fabian Ware was too old to enlist. He joined the Red Cross, and begun working
on the frontline in France. There he was horrified by the ignominious end to
the lives of many of the soldiers who, buried hastily, were often lost as the
battle lines moved back and forth. He started to record their identity and the
position of their graves, his work quickly being recognised. In a tale almost as contentious and bloody
as the war itself, the Graves
Registration Commission was established, and as reports of his work became
public, and the flood of letters from grieving relatives became a cascade, the
Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission was formed.
David Crane
gives a profoundly moving account of the creation of the great citadels to the
dead, which involved the leading politicians, architects and writers of the day
from Kipling to Lutyens. It is the story of both cynical political motivation,
as governments sought to justify the sacrifices made, as well as the outpouring
of great personal grief, following the ‘war to end all wars’. Ware navigated the bitter political and
artistic storms to create what Kipling, whose own son was killed, termed ‘work
greater than that of the Pharaohs.’
About the author:
David Crane's previous books include Lord
Byron’s Jackal, published to great acclaim in 1998, The Kindness of Sisters, a groundbreaking work of romantic
biography, the highly acclaimed Scott of
the Antarctic, and Men of War, a
collection of 19th Century naval biographies. He lives in north-west Scotland.
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