Book dossier

William, an Englishman

by Cicely Mary Hamilton

This book is one of the best books about WWI that is not about the actual fighting soldiers or families on the home front. Focused a man and a woman, one a socialist, the other a suffragette, who are forced from their comforts and "normal" lives because of the war, but in a way that is not so common. They go to their honeymoon in cottage in the remote hills of the Belgian Ardennes, when "suddenly" the war breaks out. They encounter German military routines with a detached humor, only to be pushed into the heart of the brutality of war a mere day later. The book has a sense of immediacy and shows a realistic and grim view of the WWI.