Skip to main content

Richard van Emden

Biography

Richard van Emden

Richard van Emden has interviewed over 270 veterans of the Great War and has written 15 books on the subject, including BOY SOLDIERS OF THE GREAT WAR and THE LAST FIGHTING TOMMY. He has also worked on more than a dozen television programs on the First World War, including "Britain’s Last Tommies," "Britain’s Boy Soldiers," the award-winning "The Roses of No Man’s Land" and "War Horse: The Real Story." He lives in West London.

Richard van Emden

Books by Richard van Emden

Tommy's War: The Western Front in Soldiers' Words and Photographs
by Richard van Emden - History, Military, Nonfiction, Photography, Picture

Not a traditional history of World War I --- not simply the army’s history of battles won and lost --- TOMMY'S WAR is first and foremost the soldier’s story. Renowned WWI historian Richard van Emden reveals the life of the everyday soldier, using personal photos, diaries, letters home, and observations of the ordinary man and the minutiae of life in the trenches. Including over 250 personal and unpublished photographs, combined with extracts from personal diaries and letters written by soldiers and civilians in Britain through each year of the war until Armistice Day in 1918, TOMMY'S WAR is a stunning portrayal of humanity, at its best and at its worst.