Something very different this week on the old frontliners.

For the first time on this podcast we head to Italy

and look at one of the less known aspects of the Great War for an English-speaking audience.

That war in northern Italy so often fought up in the mountains. We're joined by Tom Isit, an author, historian, photographer

who wrote Riding in the Zone Rouge, a fascinating book following a cycle route across the old

battlefields in 1919, and who now has recently published

the book, Thunder in the Mountains, an absolutely stunning work of more than 300 pages,

full of amazing detail, excellent maps, which I always love, and jaw-dropping photographs as well.

And I hope here we'll discover more about this part of the First World War

and perhaps inspire a few of you to explore these battlefields too. So welcome Tom.

Thank you very much. It's great to have you here because I mean this is the first time we have

discussed this part of the Great War on this on this podcast. 280 odd episodes. I mean people say say to me, you must have covered it all by now, but you know you and I know that you only begin to scratch the surface with any of these kind of subjects. Absolutely. But a lot of people are probably not familiar with this aspect of the Great War. So I thought we'd start with kind of a bit of background to the war in Northern Italy, if that's okay.

Who was fighting this war in the mountains?

And I guess why?

The why is a very good question.

I mean, basically, at the beginning of the war, Italy stood on the sidelines. It was in a treaty with the Austro-Hungarians and Germans,

but it was purely a defensive treaty. So the Italians said it's nothing to do with us.

We're staying on the sidelines. And basically, the Italians were just holding out to see who

offered them the best deal to come in on their side. So the Allies came up with the best offer and in May of

1915 Italy joined forces with the Allies and declared war on Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary

were outraged by what they claimed was a betrayal, but they weren't very surprised.

Everyone knew that Conrad von Hotsendorf couldn't wait to get to the Italians.

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