Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War Peter Barham

Although the shell-shocked British soldier of Word War I has been a favoured subject in both fiction and nonfiction, focus has been on the stories of officers, and the history of the rank and file servicemen who were psychiatric casualties has never been told. This profoundly moving book recounts the poignant, sometimes ribald histories of this neglected group for the first time. Peter Barham draws on reports from the front lines, case histories, personal letters, and war pensions files to trace the lives and fortunes of a large cast of ex-servicemen who suffered mental breakdowns. He describes the confines of their asylums, the reactions of families to their relatives' plight, the turmoil of the soldiers when they returned home - and the uphill struggle they faced trying to secure justice from the bureaucratic labyrinth that was the Minitstry of Pensions. His book gives a new perspective to the impact of the Great War and to current controversies about disputed postwar maladies.

Peter Barham is a psychologist an social historian of mental health. He has published widely on mental health issues but this is his first full-length historical work.

'Like many successful histories, this is a study that allows the past to speak for itself without the historian getting in the way' - The Daily Telegraph

'[Barham's] indefatigable fossickings in the records have uncovered heartbreaking stories, but also signs of a long-deferential public jolted into political life' - The Scotsman

'...a splendid title he assures us is ironic' - The Literary Review

'Rather than concentrate on such war poets as Siegfried Sasson, who suffered from shell-shock, he tells the story of the rank-and-file servicemen who became psychiatric casualties but were forever after commonly referred to as 'lunatics' - The Sunday Express

'His indefatigable fossickings in the records have uncovered heartbreaking stories, but also signs of a long-deferential public being jolted into political life' - The Scotsman

'...a poignant reminder of the ordinary servicemen who sacificed their sanity in fighting for their country' - The Independent on Sunday

'...a special award for the most unexpectedly enthralling subject' - The Scotsman

'No historian could have brought to this subject the power and passsion which Peter Barham sustains over a long book' - The Times Literary Supplement