The Somme

The Battle of the Somme as originally described by The Times war correspondents is republished in this highly illustrated volume from The Times Archive. Hundreds of original photographs, illustrations, and maps are presented alongside a comprehensive history of the battle, key events, people and places, reproduced exactly as they were at the time.

Relive the original intensity through the detailed descriptions of the correspondents on the ground and visualize the nature of the conditions illustrated by the fascinating black and white original photographs.

When war was declared in August 1914 The Times under its chief editor, Wickham Steed, embarked on an extraordinary project. As well as authoritative daily war reports in the paper itself, a separate weekly supplement would be produced, with 40 extra, illustrated pages of in-depth analysis. The result was The Times History of the War, collected into 22 massive volumes in 1921: 11,000 pages; 6 million words; thousands of photographs, graphics, illustrations and maps.

The pages detailing The Battle of the Somme have been extracted from those volumes to produce a detailed history of the bloody battle as told 100 years ago.