Heroes in Twilight by Bernard Bergonzi (Carcane £12.95 in UK)

Now 30 odd years old, this is a study of British writing in the first World War, including the work of poets, novelists and autobiographical writers such as Robert Graves in Goodbye to All That. The poets number among them Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Charles Sorley and Isaac Rosenberg, all of whom were killed, and Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden, who survived. Civilian authors are brought in too, including Wells, Lawrence and Arnold Bennett, and there is even a section dealing with works written about the war by men who were born well after it.