The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer

This stirringand perceptive work explores the Great War through its cultural aftermath – films, literature, memorials. Despite the subject matter, it is an uplifting, even an enjoyable book. Dyer's insights are supported by odd revelations – 500,000 British volunteered at football matches. It is impossible not to be moved by a parental inscription over a soldier shot for desertion: "A worthy son of his father". In the final pages, Dyer writes transportingly about a Somme cemetery: "I have never felt so peaceful."