The First World War holds a unique place in the nation’s history; the poetry it produced, a unique place in the nation’s hearts. To mark the centenary of the First World War in 2014, the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has engaged the most eminent poets of the present to choose the writing from the Great War that touched them most profoundly: their choices are here in this powerful and moving assembly. But this anthology is more than a record of war writing. Carol Ann Duffy has commissioned these same poets of the present to look back across the past and write a poem of their own in response to the war to end all wars.

Whether as a reader your interest is in the Great War or the great war poets, or whether it is in the poetry of today, this anthology will hold a special place in your affections, as it remembers and recalls - a and through its commissioned work, renews and honours - the engagement between poetry and this terrible, unworldly of world conflicts.