Peter Liddle is a historian and author specializing in the study of the First and Second World Wars. He began collecting personal experiences and memorabilia from the First World War to bring history to life for his students. This collection, now permanently housed at the University of Leeds, represents a deep commitment to making the past vivid through authentic accounts.
Peter Liddle's latest book draws extensively upon diaries, letters, reports, photographs and drawing from the magnificent Liddle Collection of 1914-1918 personal experience material. It also sets out to examine the concept and planning the the Battle of the Somme and then its conduct over the whole four and a half months
"This book attempts to set out the contemporary evidence of participants in order to reveal that there was something unique about their service, perceived at the times as especial, and which in its separate elements has been recalled by many of them years later with something not far short of relish"--Page ix