Merton Priory Press
an independent publisher
of academic and mid-market history
including new titles and reprints
9 OWEN FALLS AVENUE :: CHESTERFIELD :: S41 0FR :: Tel: +44(0)1246 554026
Email: mertonpriory@btinternet.com
Almost Like A Dream
A Parish at War 1914-19
edited by Michael Austin
Throughout the First World War the vicar of St Michael's in Derby, a largely working-class parish, encouraged men who had joined up
to write of their experiences for the parish magazine. The resulting letters form a remarkable record of the hopes and fears, as well as the day-to-day lives, of these men. All volunteers, most served in the ranks of their local county regiment, seeing action on the Western Front, in Greece, Palestine and South Africa.
The letters, edited here with an introduction, biographical notes and photographs, bring to life the horrors of the Great War with a stark authenticity that only comes from first-hand accounts. These are not polished literary compositions written for publication by the well-known authors and war poets of the period, most of whom served as officers, but the hasty scribbles, full of fear and emotion, the feelings of ordinary men who fought in the trenches of France and Flanders, suffered the heat and dust of India, or the struggled to survive the disease-ridden campaigns of Salonika and East Africa.
Michael Austin is also the author of Under The Heavy Clouds and A Time of Unhappy Commotion
