A DERBYSHIRE COMMUNITY AND THE GREAT WAR
By Charles Beresford
           
 
About The Book
 
 
 

The author's thorough research of local contemporary sources and the scouring of archive material across the UK, Canada and other parts of the world have resulted in a comprehensive and vivid account of the Great War through the eyes of both the fighting men and the noncombatants of one Derbyshire community as it answered the call of king and country.

Quoting extensively from the words of those involved, it is a story of endurance, courage, apprehension and varying shades of human nature as the Community grappled with a crisis on a scale unimaginable when war was declared on 4th August 1914.

Its wide scope covers all aspects of the War from the experiences of the local men who fought and died to the Belgian refugees, from the early recruiting meetings to the coming of conscription and from the food and other shortages to remembering and honouring the dead. It also chronicles the effect of the War on Matlock Bath's prime economic life as an inland resort.

     
 
Five chapters are devoted to a forgotten local aspect of the War in Matlock Bath - the Canadian Convalescent Officers' Hospital, which was based at The Royal Hotel from the beginning of 1918 for eighteen months. In what is believed to be a unique look at a Canadian First World War Hospital, it covers such aspects as its administration, the medical and nursing staff (all of whom are detailed in the appendices) and the almost incredible stories of some of the patients themselves.

It is a work that will be welcomed not only by both amateur and academic local, military and social historians in the UK and Canada alike, but will appeal to anyone who wants to know what it was really like for the individual men and women who were touched by that terrible conflict.

A Roll of Honour has been provided giving the names of 250 men who are known to have served in the War and were associated by residence, birth, work or other reasons with Matlock Bath.

The reader will gain an understanding of the endeavours of a now dead generation and realise that there was more to the Great War than the popular beliefs of mud, futility and lions led by donkeys.

 

You can order your personal signed copy of The Bath at War here.

Read about the author here.