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The unknown warrior : a personal journey of discovery and remembrance

Nichol, John, 1963-2025

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Summary

The unprecedented scale and destruction of the First World War meant that hundreds of thousands of soldiers perished without being properly identified in death. Over 300,000 names were left without bodies to match; bodies, or fragments of bodies, were left without names. Three hundred thousand families waiting in vain to know what happened to their loved ones. In response to this devastation, an idea was born. A single tomb in Westminster Abbey, housing the remains of an unidentified soldier, to commemorate every one of the missing alongside the nation’s poets, artists, scientists and kings. In The Unknown Warrior, Sunday Times-bestselling author John Nichol embarks on a quest to tell the history of this idea and how it came to be realised. Along the way, he uses diaries, archives and interviews with the descendants of that lost generation to unearth the stories of some of those who died on the battlefield, and their friends who survived, often struggling with the memories of their fallen comrades and the horrors of war. He talks to contemporary experts in battle-field recovery, organising state occasions, and what it's like to lose someone you love in combat and have no body to bury.