Lionel Sotheby's Great War - Diaries and Letters from the Western Front
Lionel Sotheby says of war that 'nobody who has not done it realizes what it is.' That is certainly true, war is beyond imagining; but we can approach the reality in personal narratives like this. If Sotheby's war-story isn't an especially heroic one, it is something more instructive: the direct, immediate setting down of an ordinary young officer's brief life and death on the Western Front. It is a valuable addition to the Great War story.