The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way by Anthony Seldon - Non Fiction - Paperback

Details:. Condition: BRAND NEW. Format: Paperback. ISBN: 9781838957421. Publisher: Atlantic Books. Overview:. The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way is Sir Anthony Seldon's account of a gruelling 1,000-kilometre pilgrimage along the former WWI battle lines, from the Swiss border to the English Channel. Inspired by a young soldier's forgotten dream of a permanent memorial path, this Waterstones Best Books of 2022 pick blends military history, travel writing and personal memoir. A thoughtful gift for history lovers, walkers and anyone drawn to remembrance and resilience.. About the Book:. Historian and educator Anthony Seldon set out on a 35-day, 1,000-kilometre walk retracing the old Western Front, from the French-Swiss border to the Channel coast. The route follows the vision of Alexander Douglas Gillespie, a young British officer who dreamed of a "Via Sacra" - a sacred path linking the battlefields as a permanent memorial to the fallen. Gillespie was killed before his idea could be realised, and it lay forgotten for a century until Seldon uncovered it in a school archive. Walking through the Vosges, the Argonne, Champagne, Arras, the Somme and Ypres, Seldon confronts heat exhaustion, blisters and exhaustion alongside the weight of history itself - crumbling trenches, quiet war cemeteries and once-scarred fields. His prose moves fluidly between vivid travelogue and reflective memoir, weaving in his own personal circumstances as he searches for meaning and renewed pu...