When, after the Great War, the Imperial War Graves Commission began its immense task of erecting headstones to mark the graves of Britain's dead and those of her Empire, the next-of-kin of the deceased were offered the opportunity to have a personal inscription added to the official information engraved on each stone. The response was extraordinary. Ranging from the homespun to the resoundingly lyrical, the bereaved families' chosen words embraced an astonishing variety of sentiments to express feelings of grief, sacrifice, Christian faith, pride, duty, patriotism...sometimes anger, too.Some of them reflect attitudes of an era which, not yet entirely gone from living memory, is made to seem impossibly remote. Based on five years' research, this book presents more than 1,500 epitaphs on First World War headstones in the cemeteries of Belgium and France. These tributes to young sons, husbands and brothers of that lost generation, buried far from home, provide an eloquent and moving demonstration of the power and beauty of language.