A graphic Somme

By DAVID HORSPOOL

We're bracing ourselves at the TLS for a barrage of books on the First World War, as publishers scramble to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of hostilities next year. Being impatient types, many of them have decided to release their volumes a year early, and not just those that focus on the last year of peace in their time ('1913' by Florian Lillies, or '1913' by Charles Emmerson -- doesn't JC offer a prize for this sort of thing?). Max Hastings, Saul David, Allan Mallinson and Margaret Macmillan all have books coming out over the next months, which will be scrutinized, and perhaps even reviewed, as they arrive. Next year, Mark Bostridge, the biographer of Florence Nightingale, will be publishing a study of England in 1914. 

Originality is at a premium when it comes to this subject, so another arrival here is most welcome: the graphic novelist Joe Sacco's "illustrated panorama", The Great War: July 1, 1916, The First Day of the Battle of the Somme (Jonathan Cape, £20). In 24 black-and-white plates, printed on a continuous sheet of "accordion fold" paper, Sacco depicts the preparations for and eventual horror of the bloodiest day in the British Army's history, with 20,000 deaths among 60,000 casualties. To give an idea of the impact of the book, as we move from the order of HQ and the massing of troops to the chaos of battle, I tried stretching it out and filming it. Apologies for the quality, but you get something of the atmosphere of this twenty-first-century Bayeux Tapestry, which is accompanied by an author's note explaining each plate, and an introductory essay by the historian and biographer Adam Hochschild.