Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I

The Western Front, the sinuous, deadly line of trenches that stretched from the English Channel to Switzerland during the First World War, also formed a scar on the imaginative landscape of our century.

On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, armed only with a backpack, a compass and a silver hip flask, Stephen O'Shea set out to walk the trenches of the Western Front. In this account of his 750-kilometre trek, he brings a refreshing sensibility to bear on the peculiar countryside that was once no man’s land. Travelling in the company of barking dogs, voluble village eccentrics and the ghosts of battles long past, he seeks a forgotten sense of history and a link to the grandfathers––both Irish soldiers in the Great War––he never knew.