In this month’s findmypast.co.uk newsletter, we’re giving 15 lucky readers the chance to win a bestselling WWI book from Penguin. The books, from one of Penguin’s most popular WWI authors, are being reprinted to commemorate the centenary of WWI and we’ve got some of the first copies to give away, hot off the press.
All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning one of the books is send the correct answer to the following question to competition@findmypast.co.uk with ‘September newsletter competition’ in the subject line and your name and postal address in the email body:
In what year was the beginning of WWI declared?
The competition closes on Monday 14 October 2013 so send in your answer before then. We’ll announce the lucky winners on the blog in October. We’ve got five copies of each of the three titles to give away – the books will be allocated randomly to 15 people who email us the correct answer.
More about the books
Somme
Somme explores one of the most harrowing battles in British history. In 1916, British and French empires fought against the German empire on the banks of the River Somme in France. Hundreds of thousands of men were killed, maimed or wounded.
In Somme, Lyn Macdonald lets the men who were there tell their own stories: vivid and harrowing, yet shot through with humour, resilience and great courage.
Passchendaele
The third battle of Ypres culminated in a desperate struggle for the ridge and village of Passchendaele. It was one of the most appalling campaigns of the First World War. A million Tommies, Canadians and Anzacs assembled at the Ypres Salient in the summer of 1917, mainly fresh young troops eager to do their bit for King and country.
Lyn Macdonald’s Passchendaele tells the story of their mounting disillusion and terror, alongside their courage, comradeship and bawdy humour. Passchendaele portrays the human realities behind one of the most disastrous events in the history of warfare.
The Roses of No Man’s Land
‘On the face of it,’ writes Lyn Macdonald, ‘no one could have been less equipped for the job than these gently nurtured girls who walked straight out of Edwardian drawing rooms into the manifest horrors of the First World War…’
Yet the volunteer nurses rose magnificently to the occasion. They fought another war, against agony and death, as men lay suffering from the pain of unimaginable wounds and diseases. The Roses of No Man’s Land describes how women achieved a quiet but permanent revolution, by proving beyond question that they could do anything.
