Description:

Similar to Letters From Iwo Jima and All Quiet On The Western Front, this book tells the story of young men from many nations thrown into the crucible of war, fighting not just to survive, but to understand what was happening to them and their comrades. It tells it in the words of the soldiers themselves, in their letters home.

A legacy of an empire and a nation at war, Love, Tommy, is a collection of letters housed at Imperial War Museums sent by British and Commonwealth troops from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa from the front line of war to their loved ones at home. Poignant expressions of love, hope and fear sit alongside amusing anecdotes, grumbles about rations and thoughtful reflections, eloquently revealing how, despite the passage of time, many experiences of the fighting man are shared in countless wars and battles.
From the muddy trenches of the Somme to frozen ground of the Falklands to the heat and dust of Iraq, these letters are the ordinary soldier's testament to life on the front line.

Review

"From a top World War II historian comes a delightful collection of correspondence by British soldiers, sailors, and aviators." - The Quarterly Journal of Military History (Winter 2013)

"This book presents a moving (and historically valuable) selection of letters home." - Daily Mail (UK)

"...provides a collection of original writings gathered by the Imperial War Museum from the last hundred years, revealing the daily lives of soldiers and offering comparisons between the experiences of those fighting different wars. From anecdotes and reflections on experiences to discussions of rations and expressions of love and fear, these capture the hopes, fears and struggles of the universal soldier no matter what the war, and are packed with solid reflections."
- James A. Cox, The Midwest Book Review (January 2013)

About the Author

Andrew Roberts is the author of Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West (which won the International Churchill Society Book Award) and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 (which won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Book Award). His other books include Napoleon and Wellington, Eminent Chuchillians, and Salisbury, which won the Wolfson History Prize. His latest book, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War won the British Army Military Book of the Year for 2010. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University and lives in New York City. The author lives in Deepcut, UK.