Some Desperate Glory charts the progress of an enthusiastic and patriotic young officer who marched into battle with Palgrave’s Golden Treasury in his pack. Intensely honest and revealing, his diary evokes the day-to-day minutiae of trench warfare: its constant dangers and mind-numbing routine interspersed with lyrical and sometimes comic interludes.

Vividly capturing the spirit of the officers and men at the front, the diary grows in horror and disillusionment as Vaughan’s company is drawn into the carnage of Passchendaele from which, of his original ‘happy little band’ of 90 men, only 15 survived.