If truth be known, more than fame or money or prestige, I most crave to not ”be interfered with too much. At one point Sassoon refers to the war as a “crime against humanity”, quite a modern turn of phrase. It is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells one man's experience at the end of England's Edwardian summer. Now and and again a leisurely five-nine shell passes overhead in the blue air where the larks are singing. Bright and clean copies throughout in fine recent leather bindings of full dark blue morocco, the spines with five raised bands, compartments ruled, decorated and lettered in gilt.

It is all here, told from the point of view of an over indulged spoilt young man whose life is one long round of hunting (of course) cross country riding, point to points, cricket, parties at great country houses, and honey for tea. A very attractive example of Sassoon's famous fictional account of his life before, during and after the First World War, with seven full-page illustrations (with tissue guards) and chapter-heading vignettes throughout by William Nicholson.On the other hand it can be seen as an indictment (knowing or otherwise) of the generally indolent and purposeless lives of the idle rich before an entire generation was nearly decimated. A very good copy in a very good dustwrapper, a little dusty with a short closed tear to the upper panel and some light edge wear.

No book on this subject has ever quite touched me in the same way, probably because I knew these characters were based on real people. This novel is a fictionalised account of Sassoon's experiences during and immediately following the First World War; it was an instant success, eclipsing his earlier work, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, and remains a literary classic of the period. A patriotic man, he enlisted on 3rd August, the day before Britain entered the war, as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry. For it was my own countryside, and I loved it with an intimate feeling, though all its associations were crude and incoherent.He remembers a period in the early days when he could still feel that…”the War was inevitable and justifiable. Ultimately everything leads to the final two sections and his enlistment in the army as WWI looms unexpectedly from out of the quiet pastoral background in which he has been snuggly swaddled up to this point. And if you're one of those ‘humanitarian cranks’ who worry about animal cruelty, I'm pretty sure they barely catch a single fox in the whole book.