A northern grammar-school boy who studied Modern Languages at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Tomlinson combined an awareness of social realism with an educated literary sensibility. It was war that quickened his artistic talent, and this compilation of his best work displays the remarkable range of Tomlinson's writing. The memoir Wound Stripe, but No V.C. provides powerful first-hand accounts of real life in the trenches. Many of the war poems were published shortly after the Armistice and were praised for their originality, passion and vigour; present-day readers may respond particularly to their bitter satire. Tomlinson's letters from the front reveal a complex and engaging character besides providing a counter-blast to the propaganda of the time and describing - or showing how hopeless it is to attempt to describe - the soldier's true experience. The play The Burning Boche is a light-hearted jeu d'esprit which nonetheless contains in its central act (reproduced here in its entirety) a striking portrayal of trench life, rendering accurately the black humour of the men and vividly realising the confusion of action in No-Man's-Land. Appendices include a sampling of verse from other periods of Tomlinson's life, some propaganda that he produced for the War Office, and his venomous reaction to an encounter with Rupert Brooke. Taken together, these writings are both fascinating in their own right and a complement to the better-known but perhaps less representative figures of World War I.