A compulsive read. A harrowing account of trench warfare and I wondered why I was still reading as I kept turning the pages through the night in an uncontrollable need to finish it.

Alice Winn describes the horrors of WW1 in a casual, almost glib manner. Her crafting of the love affair between Ellwood and Gaunt, so taught with yearning and misunderstanding, is sensitive and intimate.

This isn’t an easy book but one I needed to read, crammed with history, tragedy and humanity, and the characters of the two boys just sing from the pages.