The offensive on the Somme took place between July and November 1916 and is perhaps the most iconic battle of the Great War. It was there that Kitchener's famous 'Pals' Battalions were first sent into action en masse and it was a battlefield where many of the dreams and aspirations of a nation, hopeful of victory, were agonizingly dashed. Because of its legendary status, the Somme has been the subject of many books, and many more will come out next year. However, nothing has ever been published on the Battle in which the soldiers' own photographs have been used to illustrate both the campaign's extraordinary comradeship and its carnage. AUTHOR: Richard Van Emden graduated from Newcastle University in 1988, and obtained an MA from Reading University in the following year. After working as a journalist he became a freelance writer and researcher. Having worked on several historically-based television series, he then began to write. SELLING POINTS: * Approx 150 never-before-published images of the campaign taken by the men who fought.

* New and rarely-read accounts of the fighting written by the men who were there. * Includes images taken on the first day of the battle, the most catastrophic day in British military history, as well as never-before seen images of the world's first tanks deployed in September 1916. * A complete story of the British effort in Picardy, from their first arrival in 1915 to the end of the campaign. *The third in a trilogy of books by Richard van Emden. The other two books are: 'Tommy's War' which covers the entire war on the Western Front in privately-taken images and most recently, 'Gallipoli' using never-before-seen privately-taken images of the campaign.