The great modernist artist and poet David Jones grew up in Brockley, London. He finished art school in the summer of 1913, ready to pursue a career as an artist. But then Britain declared war on Germany, and Jones joined the army. He was sent to France in 1915, serving in the same regiment as Robert Graves; unlike him, however, he was a private, a rank he kept throughout the war. He fought in and survived the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele, experiencing the war of the common soldier the camaraderie, the humour, the grief, and above all the senseless, mechanised brutality all under the stress...