The initiative “Western Front Way” aims at making it possible to walk the length of the Western Front of the Great War, to walk in the memory of the “Silent Witnesses” lying on both sides of the front. As a bit of a WW1 buff I found the descriptions of the battles and aftermath (abandoned villages) most interesting. After that, he wrote, he hoped to “send every man and child in Western Europe on pilgrimage along that Via Sacra, so that they might think and learn what war means from the silent witnesses on either side”.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.Now he decided to walk the whole route – both to publicise the project (which will receive all the profits from The Path of Peace) and, he hoped, to help him achieve more balance in his own life. The central concept of a path of peace along the old Western Front is a superb one and I'm pleased this seems to be making good progress gaining the necessary backing. The repeated sets of details of numbers killed, atrocities and more certainly hammer the point home, though over time it can feel a little repetitive. The only slightly jarring note for me is the way the author turns his grief around the recent death of his wife into something a bit close to self-pity and his attempts to denigrate himself feel a little like false modesty.

To support the “Western Front Way”-initiative the author in the late summer of 2021 set out to walk the whole length “from the Vosges to the sea” . I]n a book market packed with every type of First World War tome, this one truly deserves to be read . I can't say this reflects my own experience - when I was at school, the Second World War was far more prominent and engaging as a historical subject - but Seldon's passion for the horrific events of the period comes through strongly and I learned a huge amount.For the reasons stated above, a similar book from the German point of view, alas, will not be forthcoming. Four stars for its content and respectful, compassionate approach; one star down, because the presentation didn’t work for me. He has a historian’s enthusiasm and sharp eye for spotting and recounting good stories, many from the particular battlefields he is passing by.

It is not a history book of the First World War and there are some nitpicking things which I could say were not quite correct, but while this book will undoubtedly interest students of WWI it is not a history of the war. Seldon's walk, at the centre of this book, was in part a means of raising publicity for the venture.Drawing again on his deep knowledge the author enriches the story of the Western Front with the personal fate of participants in the fights; not very much new there (e. The War of Independence gave George Washington a national profile that helped him become the new country’s first head of state.