For me it was as if there was too much packed into it, and it was distracting to have had the book manoeuvred into such a personal shape.

As for the realism of the idea of establishing the Western Front Way as a long distance footpath/cycle path, Seldon's struggles to avoid busy roads and to stay anywhere near the multiple lines of the front for stretches at a time, combined with the sheer scale of the project, made it feel unlikely ever to be fully achieved.I wouldn’t presume to take issue with that, and I imagine that it would be a very useful source of knowledge and analysis for anyone needing to study or learn about The Western Front.

Along the way Anthony Seldon digs into the issue how WWI and its after-effects still influences our today’s families, detailing how the sometimes quite dramatic experiences his ancestors had in the Great War formed their later lives. He was the 13th Master (headmaster) of Wellington College, one of Britain's co-educational independent boarding schools. Touching on grief, loss and the legacy of war, The Path of Peace is the extraordinary story of Anthony’s epic walk, an unforgettable act of remembrance and a triumphant rediscovery of what matters most in life. Now he decided to walk the whole route – both to publicise the project (which will receive all the profits from The Path of Peace) and, he hoped, to help him achieve more balance in his own life. After that, he wrote, he hoped to “send every man and child in Western Europe on pilgrimage along that Via Sacra, so that they might think and learn what war means from the silent witnesses on either side”.

The Western Front Way, an idea that waited 100 years for its moment, is the simplest and fittest memorial yet to the agony of the Great War. Four stars for its content and respectful, compassionate approach; one star down, because the presentation didn’t work for me. His walk had echoes of the exploits of nineteenth century explorers - not only did he undertake it when most of us weren't travelling because of the Covid pandemic, it seemed to involve very vague planning, carrying no paper maps, and the mad inspiration of not taking any spare clothing to reduce the weight of stuff to carry.

Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe’s most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres. I can't say this reflects my own experience - when I was at school, the Second World War was far more prominent and engaging as a historical subject - but Seldon's passion for the horrific events of the period comes through strongly and I learned a huge amount. I haven’t read any other book by Anthony Seldon, but I think this must have been a very different undertaking for him personally than would have been his previous books, political analyses of former UK Prime Ministers. Drawing again on his deep knowledge the author enriches the story of the Western Front with the personal fate of participants in the fights; not very much new there (e. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.A fascinating account of walking the length of the World War 1 Western Front following one soldier's experience and the idea of creating a lasting living monument to the fallen. Having discovered that all profits from the sale of this book were to go to the "Western Front Way" I had a slight qualm at having bought second hand, but then someone presumably had bought them new, so the profits had already gone to the WFW. Some of his problems, Seldon now suspects, can be traced back to the psychological aftershocks of the great war. Publication of The Path of Peace should play a major role in raising awareness and pushing things forward. We not only get an awful lot of detail about aspects of the First World War that are likely to be unfamiliar to most readers (certainly me), we also get to share in a romantic dream.

The repeated sets of details of numbers killed, atrocities and more certainly hammer the point home, though over time it can feel a little repetitive. An very interesting read on several levels: in addition to the many trials and tribulations of establishing this route (1000 km / 600 miles), Anthony Seldon weaves in much of his personal life which into the walk. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Very moving and I do hope this dream becomes a reality as a lasting monument for unnecessary deaths. My only criticism would be - not enough to knock a star off - was the quality of the photographic reproduction.He has a historian’s enthusiasm and sharp eye for spotting and recounting good stories, many from the particular battlefields he is passing by. In it Anthony Seldon documents the walk he took along the whole of the Western Front of World War One, as part of his self-appointed mission to establish a via sacra, a path of peace, fulfilling the vision of a young soldier, Douglas Gillespie, who was killed in the early weeks of the war.