As we look back on World War I on the occasion of its hundredth anniversary, we do so with the benefit of hindsight and the accumulated wisdom of a century of writing and thought. But what was it like to experience firsthand those first few years of war—to see an aerial view of the famous Battle of the Somme? How did key political figures make the difficult decision to go to war? And what did young men of the time believe their role ought to be?
           
From Downing Street to the Trenches gathers eyewitness accounts and photographs that vividly convey this lived experience. The letters of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith show the strain of wartime leadership and shed light on his later downfall, while letters home from the young Harold Macmillan are suffused with his experiences in the trenches and mark the beginning of his road to Downing Street. Although it was forbidden to record cabinet discussions, Secretary of State Lewis Harcourt’s unauthorized diary provides a window into the government of the time, complete with character sketches of some of the leading figures, including Winston Churchill. In addition to political figures, the book draws on many local records, including the diary of an Essex rector, written to record the impact of the war on his community and parish.
           
Filled with fear and sorrow but also suffused with hope for the future, the accounts collected here paint a highly personal and immediate picture of the war as it was happening to real people of the time.

As the devastation of German-occupied Belgium awakened Britain to the horrors of the Great War, a group of English cartoonists responded to these events with characteristic black humor. Among the most inventive responses was advertising artist John Hassall’s Ye Berlyn Tapestrie, an ambitious red-and-black panorama measuring thirty panels and more than fifteen feet and modeled after the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which recorded William the Conqueror’s invasion of England and the Battle of Hastings. 
           
Ye Berlyn Tapestrie adapts the format of the Bayeux Tapestry to depict Kaiser Wilhelm II’s invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium. Hassall takes every opportunity to lampoon the German army, who are seen looting homes, marching shamefully through the streets behind women and children, drinking copious amounts of wine, and producing gas from sauerkraut and Limburger cheese. With comic inventiveness, Hassall has appended to the borders of the original Bayeux Tapestry stereotypical objects which the British public would have associated their enemy, from schnitzel to sausages, pilsners, and wild boar.

A fascinating example of war-induced farce, Ye Berlyn Tapestrie became itself a source of inspiration for later works, including wildly popular parodies of World War II in the Daily Mail and New Yorker. More recently, award-winning cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco has adopted the format for his The Great War, which chronicles the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The Tapestrie is here presented in its entirety along with an introduction that sets out the historical conditions of its creation.