Richard van Emden has interviewed over 270 veterans of the Great War and has written twelve books on the subject including The Trench and The Last Fighting Tommy (both top ten bestsellers). He has also worked on more than a dozen television programmes on the First World War, including Prisoners of the Kaiser, Veterans, Britain's Last Tommies, the award-winning Roses of No Man's Land, Britain's Boy Soldiers and A Poem for Harry, and most recently, War Horse: The Real Story. He lives in Barnes.