With an introduction by Henry Allingham, 110, only survivor of the Battle of the Somme and Britain's oldest living man, Max Arthur's book expands the circle of contributors by interviewing the families of First World War veterans. They reveal how the war affected the families down the generations.

There are some famous names, most obviously Shirley Williams, as her mother lost her fiance and her brother in the trenches. But the war touched every family in Britain, and the IWM archives plus the Peter Liddle collection at the University of Leeds hold many other memoirs.