Love, Tommy: Letters Home, from the Great War to the Present Day

Roberts, Professor Andrew; Museum, The Imperial War

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1849087911 ISBN 13: 9781849087919

Publisher: Osprey Publishing, 2012

Over the last 100 years the Imperial War Museum has been gathering together a collection of tens of thousands of letters and archives from British and Commonwealth troops serving on the front line, in conflicts from the First World War through to the ongoing war in Afghanistan. Revealing the most intimate details of the lives of these soldiers, this collection uncovers the startling similarities between the men fighting in the muddy trenches of the Somme, yomping across the frozen ground of the Falklands and carefully picking their way through the heat and dust of Afghan wadis. Love, Tommy is a selection of some of the most emotive of these letters. Correspondence which includes poignant expressions of love, hope and fear sit alongside amusing anecdotes, grumbles about rations and thoughtful reflections, all of which reveal how, despite the passage of time, many experiences of fighting men are shared in countless wars and battles.

Review:

This book presents a moving (and historically valuable) selection of letters home, from the First World War to the present day... It is very hard to read this impressive volume with dry eyes. --Bel Mooney, Daily Mail

Roberts has done careful and painstaking research into letters which are often surprisingly humorous, despite adverse conditions and often very moving. Summaries link each section, so you often learn the fate of the writer. This is a fascinating account, based on actual words used at the time and is thoroughly recommended. --Trevor Osgerby, The Historian

A fine blend of military and social history. --BBC History Magazine

I found Love, Tommy to be a valuable collection that served to remind us the true and ugly side of war and to put human faces to the otherwise anonymous statistics. --ww2db.com

A fine blend of military and social history. --BBC History Magazine

Book Description:

Compiled by acclaimed British military history Andrew Roberts, this is a classic collection of war letters from the frontline revealing the common hopes and fears shared by soldiers across the passage of time.