This month we have 5 copies of The First World War in 100 Objects by Peter Doyle to be won.
Objects allow us to reach out and touch the past, and they play a living role in history today. Through them, we can understand the experience of men and women during the First World War. In the absence of a direct connection with those people, they bear witness, on a personal level, to their many individual stories – stories of men whose only morning comfort in the trenches was the rum ration, children who grew up with only one photograph of the father they would never meet, women who would sacrifice their girlhood in hospitals only yards from the frontline, pinning on a brooch to remind themselves of a past life.
Surviving objects from the First World War are diverse: posters and ephemera, personal mementos and military artefacts, archaeological finds and public monuments, deadly weapons and tanks, aircraft, and ships. From the iconic to the intimate, objects such as the football of Loos, a Mk I tank, a German Pickelhaube, Canadian cap badges, the ‘Butcher’ bayonet, a trench coat, a soldier’s Christmas gift, and a death card. These objects – time capsules, mute witnesses – bring a fresh perspective to the tragedy and triumph of the ‘war to end all wars’.
Competition now closed