Geoff Dyer - The Missing of the Somme

Eksteins, Modris, Rites of Spring , Bantam, 1989.

Elsen, Albert E., Modern European Sculpture 1918–1945: Unknown Beings and Other Realities , Braziller, New York, 1979.

Ferro, Marc, The Great War , Routledge, 1973.

Foot, M. R. D., Art and War , Headline, 1990.

Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975.

Fussell, Paul, Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays , Ballantine, New York, 1990.

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Harries, Meirion and Susie, War Artists , Michael Joseph, 1983.

Hibberd, Dominic, Wilfred Owen: The Last Year , Constable, 1992.

Horne, Alistair, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 , Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1964.

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Hynes, Samuel, A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture , Bodley Head, 1990.

Hynes, Samuel, The Auden Generation , Pimlico, 1992.

Keegan, John, The Face of Battle , Cape, 1976.

Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918 , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1983.

Larkin, Philip, Required Writing , Faber, 1983.

Leed, Eric J., No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War 1 , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979.

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Macdonald, Lyn, They Called It Passchendaele , Michael Joseph, 1978.

Macdonald, Lyn, The Roses of No Man’s Land , Michael Joseph, 1980.

Macdonald, Lyn, Somme , Michael Joseph, 1983.

Macdonald, Lyn, 1914 , Michael Joseph, 1987.

Middlebrook, Martin, The First Day on the Somme , Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1984.

Middlebrook, Martin and Mary, The Somme Battlefields , Viking, 1991.

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Parker, Peter, The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public School Ethos , Constable, 1987.

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Putkowski, Julian, and Sykes, Julian, Shot at Dawn , revised edn, Leo Cooper, 1992.

Robbins, Keith, The First World War , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984.

Scarry, Elaine, The Body in Pain , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985.

Silkin, Jon, Out of Battle , 2nd edn, Ark, 1987.

Stallworthy, Jon, Wilfred Owen , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1974.

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Taylor, A. J. P., The First World War , Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966.

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Virilio, Paul, War and Cinema , trans. Patrick Camiller, Verso, 1989.

Warner, Philip, Field Marshal Earl Haig , Bodley Head, 1991.

Whelan, Richard, Robert Capa: A Biography , Faber, 1985.

Williamson, Henry, Wet Flanders Plain , Gliddon, Norwich, 1989.

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Young, James E., The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning , Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993.

ANTHOLOGIES

Fussell, Paul, The Bloody Game , Scribners, 1991.

Gardner, Brian, Up the Line to Death , revised edn, Methuen, 1976.

Glover, Jon, and Silkin, Jon, The Penguin Book of First World War Prose , Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1989.

Macdonald, Lyn, 1914–1918: Voices and Images from the Great War , Michael Joseph, 1988.

Silkin, Jon, The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry , 2nd edn, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981.

Stallworthy, Jon, The Oxford Book of War Poetry , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.

Vansittart, Peter, Voices from the Great War , Cape, 1981.

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UPDATE TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY

There has been a resurgence of interest in the First World War since The Missing of the Somme came out in 1994. I have read only a fraction of the many books published since then, but recommend the following.

Arthur, Max (ed.), Forgotten Voices of the Great War , Ebury Press, London, 2002.

Bourke, Joanna, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War , Reaktion, London, 1996.

Davis, Wade, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest , Bodley Head, London, 2011.

Englund, Peter, The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War , Profile, London, 2011.

Fergusson, Niall, The Pity of War , Allen Lane, London, 1998.

Hochschild, Adam, To End All Wars: How the First World War Divided Britain , Macmillan, London, 2011.

Keegan, John, The First World War , Hutchinson, London, 1998.

Stamp, Gavin, The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, Profile, London, 2006.

Stevenson, David, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War , Allen Lane, London, 2004.

Stone, Norman, WW1: A Short History , Allen Lane, London, 2007.

Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995.

I would like to thank my friends Paul Bonaventura, Chris Mitchell and Mark Hayhurst for reading an early draft of the manuscript and making many useful suggestions. (I am especially indebted to Mark whose quick reactions prevented us from getting killed — thanks to Paul’s reckless driving — in Flanders.)

I am grateful to the editors of Esquire , the Independent , the Observer and New Statesman & Society for giving me space to try out draft versions of some of these pages; also to Patrick Early for the opportunity to lecture (in Belgrade of all places) on Wilfred Owen — and to David Punter for his helpful response to that lecture.

Thanks also to Ian Watson in Paris for encouragment and provocative suggestions, to Jeremy Young for his photographs, to Jane Pugh for the loan of an album of pictures, and to Xandra Hardie, Charles Drazin and Alexandra Pringle.

An award from the Kay Blundell Trust enabled me to complete the manuscript.

My ongoing debt to John Berger is too extensive to be adequately acknowledged here.

Adair, Gilbert ref1, ref2

Adorno, Theodor ref1

Minima Moralia ref1

Aldington, Richard

Death of a Hero ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4n, ref5

Allward, Walter

Vimy Ridge Memorial ref1, ref2

Amundsen, Roald ref1

Anderson, Benedict ref1, ref2

Angel, John

Exeter Memorial ref1

Armistice Day (anniversaries) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Asquith, Cynthia ref1