Book description
Brothers in War is the immensely powerful and deeply tragic
story of the Beechey brothers, and how they paid the ultimate price
for King and country. All eight went to fight in the Great War on such
far-flung battlefields as France, Flanders, East Africa and Gallipoli.
Only three would return alive. Even amid the carnage of the trenches,
it was a family trauma almost without parallel. Their wives and
sweethearts were left bereft, their widowed mother Amy devastated. It
is a tragedy that has remained forgotten and unmarked for nearly 90
years. Until now.
Kept in a small brown case handed down by the brothers' youngest
sister, Edie, were hundreds of letters sent home from the front by the
Beechey boys: scraps of paper scribbled on in the firing line,
heartfelt messages written from a deathbed, exasperated
correspondences detailing the absurdities of life in the trenches.
From it all emerges the remarkable tale of the lost brothers.
Tragic and moving, poetic in its intensity, Brothers in War
reveals first-hand the catastrophe that was the Great War; all told
through one family forced to sacrifice everything.
Michael Walsh has edited regional newspapers and worked as a staff
and freelance sub-editor on national dailies and Sundays. He is Saturday
chief sub-editor on
The People
sports desk and has written for
The Sunday Telegraph
,
The People
and
Saga Magazine
.
Brothers In War
is his first book. He is married with two daughters and lives in
Ducklington, Oxfordshire.
