Passchendaele is the next volume in the highly regarded series of books
from the best-selling First World War historian Richard van Emden. Once
again, using the winning formula of diaries and memoirs, and above all
original photographs taken on illegally held cameras by the soldiers
themselves, Richard tells the story of 1917, of life both in and out of
the line culminating in perhaps the most dreaded battle of them all, the
Battle of Passchendaele. His pervious book, The Somme, has now sold
nearly 20,000 copies in hardback and softback, proving that the public
appetite is undiminished for new, original stories illustrated with over
150 rarely or never-before-seen battlefield images. The author has an
outstanding collection of over 5,000 privately taken and overwhelmingly
unpublished photographs, revealing the war as it was seen by the men
involved, an existence that was sometimes exhilarating, too often
terrifying, and occasionally even fun. Richard van Emden interviewed 270
veterans of the Great War, has written extensively about the soldiers'
lives, and has worked on many television documentaries, always
concentrating on the human aspects of war, its challenge and its cost to
the millions of men involved. This book will be published in June 2017,
in time for the 100th anniversary of the epic Battle of Passchendaele
which began on 31st July 1917 Richard van Emden's books sold over
650,000 books and have appeared in The Times' bestseller chart on a
number of occasions. He lives in West London and regularly appears on
television, mostly recently as BBC1's historian for the national
commemorations of the Somme Battle. He has appeared on over forty
television documentaries and has written nineteen books on the First
World War.
