As We Were is a history of the Great War, first published as a blog, but now set to appear as an extraordinary four-book boxed set published by whitefox. Publication requires, however, sufficient pre-publication sales being made.
During 2014-2018, David Hargreaves produced a history of the Great War as a week-by-week blog over the war's four-year anniversary. Now, it has been worked into a book.
The book has become a huge project, producing 750,000-odd words of material, and his publisher has suggested presenting it in a wonderful four-book boxed set, entitled As We Were. The design process is well under way and promises four stunning illustrated volumes, together making a sum greater than the parts.
Provided a sufficient number of copies are ordered by 17 August 2020, offsetting the huge production costs, whitefox will proceed with the plan, publishing a classic set of books. For more:
Below, David's editor provides detail on the appeal.
See also the film, made by David's former pupil, Ciccio Coppola, for the background to this extraordinary project (Left).
An excerpt from the book is here.
Thanks to an exceptional researcher, Margaret-Louise O’Keeffe, David Hargreaves has had access to, and woven together, screeds of long forgotten or rarely seen material, from newspaper extracts to the intimate letters and diaries of soldiers and nurses, politicians and generals, MPs and councillors, kings, queens, businessmen and campaigners. In other words, people from every walk of life. Husbands and wives, mistresses, sons, daughters, cousins and friends, everyone has a story to tell. It is impossible to overstate the breadth of the research, nor the reach it has achieved into the wartime stories of so many people and nations.
Here, alongside diaries from Cynthia Asquith are those of Yves Congar, an exceptional 14-year-old French schoolboy living in occupied Sedan, who eventually became a Cardinal; alongside Vera Brittain is Piete Kuhr, a 12-year-old German girl who began her diary on 1st August 1914; there are letters written by Mehmed Fasih, a Turkish officer, and by furniture dealer Vasily Mishnin, a 27-year-old conscript from Penza in central Russia, who was worried about his pregnant wife, as well as infinitely wise and compassionate ones from Lieutenant Colonel Rowland Feilding of 6th Connaught Rangers to his wife (you will discover that Rowland is obviously David’s favourite character); meanwhile, the Richthofen brothers provide a unique take on the complicated psychology and exhausting physical demands of the fighter pilot, and nurse Edith Appleton lets rip, towards the end, on the difficulty of treating the wounded from each side equally; and then there is poetry from Sassoon, Owen and Brooke sitting with that of Private Isaac Rosenberg of the Royal Lancashire Regiment, who died fighting near the village of Frampoux, and whose body was never recovered.
Alongside all this from the articulate, some of the most moving material comes from the almost illiterate, the dispossessed men and women whose fate it was to be caught up in the conflict. These people, too, needed to express themselves and their testimony emphasises how movingly true it is that, ‘At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.’
The editing process was a roller-coaster. Despite what you might imagine, I spent as much time laughing as weeping. David has an uncanny knack for juxtaposing moments of humour – sometimes surreal, sometimes more mundane, but always well-judged – with moments of tender, humane and loving hindsight, and all this without blanching from recounting the hopeless, sickening physical and psychic horror of it all.
Now we come to the nub of it. I recently came across an appeal published in the February 1941 edition of Horizon (the literary magazine founded in 1939), which is too apposite to leave out. The magazine was struggling due to wartime rationing and distribution problems and so Cyril Connolly, the founder, asked readers to reward individual contributors with ‘tips’:
Not more than One Hundred Pounds: that would be bad for his character. Not less than Half a Crown: that would be bad for yours.
Unfortunately, half a crown would make no dent whatsoever in these post-lockdown times, so we are asking you, a member of a community that we think will be interested in this project, to support it by paying in advance £100 for the four-book set – thereby helping us to start the presses rolling, to coin a phrase.
If we manage to sell 250 copies like this by 17 August 2020, whitefox will be able to publish As We Were and you will receive your set in time for Christmas. If we are unable to sell this number, then unfortunately we will have to shelve the project. In that event, we would, of course, refund £100 directly to your bank account.
If you decide that you would like to reserve a set – and we so hope that you do – the easiest way to do contact elspethsinclair@talktalk.net, who can furnish you with instructions for your bank transfer, take your postal address, and so forth.
The deadline for pre-publication purchases is Monday, 17th August 2020.
A short extract of the book is here.
Elspeth Sinclair, Editor