World War One was cruel, ugly and uncompromising and yet it stimulated some of the finest writing, poetry and art. Harry Stinton was neither a writer nor an artist but this volume of his words and paintings is a telling contribution to our understanding of the conflict.Harry believed it was his duty to fight, so he volunteered for a London regiment. When he chose to train as a 'bomber' he consigned himself to 'up front and personal' warfare for he was joining 'the Suicide Club' - so named because so few survived it. It was a unit that was placed in the front trench to throw grenades at the opposition, often as close as thirty yards away. If you raised your throwing arm too high you lost it to a rifle shot; if you lifted your head too far you lost your life!Harry survived a busy war - he was at most of the main battles on the Western Front - with nothing worse than a damaged arm. He returned to civilian life. It was only after his death in the 1960s that his sister, sifting through his belongings, discovered a thick exercise book crammed full with neat handwriting...and he had never told anyone he had written a diary!Fixed into the diary were thirty-nine evocative, atmospheric and splendidly naive paintings by Harry, based on his fresh memories of the incidents that had marked his war for him...and he had never told anyone he had painted these wonderful scenes!Now, nearly forty years after the material was discovered and over eighty since he compiled it, Harry's war can be relived through this publication of his words and pictures that together tell the reader as much about the real World War One than any work of great scholarship, more than any words that can come from research eighty-five years on, and more than we, or he, could ever imagine. Harry's War is destined to be read and enjoyed by all ages from nine to ninety, by those who like to understand history through the lives of people who lived it, by students of warfare and human responses to it, and by those who mark their heroes by those who did the very best they could. Harry Stinton did not plan that his words to be read or his simple paintings admired, but how rewarding for us all that this can now be the case. Read Less