ISBN: 1-84529-745-9 HB 376 pages + 2 CD-ROM's £50.00 Published by Constable & Robinson Ltd..
Peter Barton in association with the Imperial War Museum has produced a body of work that every historian and enthusiast of the Great War has been longing for. It covers the whole history of the Western Front from 1914 to 1919.
This book with its 2 CD-ROM’s will prove to be a godsend for many historians. At last they can in effect be taken back to the battlefields of the Great War. Many have visited them over the years trying to imagine the sights that greeted the combatants who were involved in this tumultuous conflict.
The book and CD-ROM’s contain some of the most outstanding images to have emerged from the Great War. You can now see the character of the physical environment of the battlefields on the Western Front. The panoramic photographs of which there are 230 are zoomable with overlay mapping. The viewer can for the first time in many years look over the battlefields and understand just what the soldiers in the Great War had to contend with. The details in the panorama’s is wonderful, the viewer can see individual soldiers, weapon, dugouts and all the other myriad parts of modern warfare. The annotation on many of the pictures will aid historians in orientating the pictures to both trench maps and modern maps. The views are taken from both British and German frontlines.
In his preface to the book Peter Barton says “ I hope this book will reveal a new vision of the symbolic landscapes upon, above and beneath which millions of men lived, toiled, fought and died on the Western Front”.
This package of the book and CD-ROM’s certainly does. It is beautifully presented and it allows the reader/viewer to have truly magnificent views of the battlefields.
The Battlefields of the First World War is without doubt the best publication on the Great War in many years it is a superb piece of work. It will be savoured with relish by all who buy it.
Reviewer: Martin Hornby
