The Missing of the Somme

Head bowed, rifle on his back, a soldier is silhouetted against the going down of the sun, looking at the grave of a dead comrade, remembering him. A photograph from the war, is also a photograph of the way the war will be remembered. It is a photograph of the future, of the future’s view of the past. Geoff Dyer’s classic book is an original and personal meditation upon war and remembrance. It weaves a network of myth and memory, photos and films, poetry and sculptures, graveyards and ceremonies that illuminate our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.

Reviews of The Missing of the Somme

Articulates a response to the Great War which many feel, but no one has analysed so scrupulously – Spectator