Books guide us along the pathways of the Great War.

A recent purchase of a book owned by the author and Great War veteran Henry Williamson

has taken me back to my early years of visiting the Somme

and my understanding of the old front line who the pages of a writer who first coined that phrase in

1917.

When you're fascinated by a subject like the Great War, books are very much an important

part of your research. Books give us modern insights from academics.

We can read the memoirs of those who are there. Regimental accounts, battalion war diaries, war poetry,

literature. The list is almost endless. But what you find is the more that you study the subject, books are not

just the tools by which you gain knowledge. They become tangible, often beautiful objects

that you enjoy owning, that you enjoy looking at and holding in your hands and turning the pages.

I have a house full of books on military history, in particular, of course, the Great War.

Can you have too many books? Well, I would argue no.

And for those of us who continue to look for those rare volumes,

we often find ourselves dipping in to the catalogs of military booksellers.

One I've known for many, many years is Tom Donovan based in Sussex.

And I'll put a link to Tom's website so like me you can spend far too many of your pennies

on books about the Great War.

But a recent list of his came out, which included

a large number of titles, many of them quite rare memoirs or contemporary accounts or famous novels

of the period, often first editions in dust wrappers, which from a value point of view makes them even more desirable and of course costly.

But what was interesting is that this was not a collection that had been gathered together by Great War enthusiasts like ourselves.

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