The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way

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Interesting detail is also added by the description of the soldiers’ equipment which at least at the beginning of the hostilities was to a large extent woefully inadequate (as the author's throughout the walk seemd to be to an expienced walker). A timely , eloquent and convincing reminder that to forget the carnage of the past is to open the door to it happening again. I did struggle a little to identify with Seldon's upper middle class, academic, establishment worldview. But Pershing never even ran for president, another marker of the way the war is regarded in the United States.

It was also notable that several times Seldon tells us how few people visited the various monuments and sites he came across - it does suggest that it is perhaps too late for this to be a project that will ever capture the imagination of massed pilgrims. He has served as headmaster of Wellington College and vice-chancellor of the (private, though non-profit) University of Buckingham, while producing dozens of comment pieces for newspapers and books on recent history, including celebrated studies of post-second world war British prime ministers. I hope that Anthony Seldon did find his own peace, scattering the traces of his own life’s battles along the path of “the silent witnesses”. Grove Press An imprint of Grove Atlantic, an American independent publisher, who publish in the UK through Atlantic Books. Nonetheless, he was forced to give up his plans to become a doctor and suffered from violent mood swings.Of course there are many pure history books with more detail about WW1 but this book is multi-faceted with additional honest detail about the Author's hopes and even dreams. Touching on grief, loss and the legacy of war, The Path of Peace is the extraordinary story of Anthony's epic walk, an unforgettable act of remembrance and a triumphant rediscovery of what matters most in life.

Anthony Seldon's account of how he walked it, and what it means to all of us, will be an inspiration to younger generations. Seldon was knighted in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to education and modern political history.Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe’s most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres. We not only get an awful lot of detail about aspects of the First World War that are likely to be unfamiliar to most readers (certainly me), we also get to share in a romantic dream. History of the First World War is intertwined throughout the account of the walk, making this an easy and engaging read. I]n a book market packed with every type of First World War tome, this one truly deserves to be read .

Publication of The Path of Peace should play a major role in raising awareness and pushing things forward. Though he had often promoted “the teaching of happiness”, he realised, “enduring peace had so far eluded me. There’s a lot more on this subject, with facts and figures, which I’m not good at retaining, and some interesting points about how much, by contrast, World War Two meant to Americans, including the role of Hollywood in its promulgation. I might not share Seldon's passion, but I can appreciate it and feel the importance that this walk traces a line that has a deep connection to the personal history of many European families. this would be a 'Via Sacra' which would provide a pilgrimage route to enable the inhabitants of Western Europe to 'think and learn what war means.As a bit of a WW1 buff I found the descriptions of the battles and aftermath (abandoned villages) most interesting. And that his life's work in private education is part of the reason for that in helping to entrench the privilege and inequality of opportunity that stifles social mobility. The patient, deeply compassionate, detail Seldon gives of these young soldiers is a worthy tribute to them – one aspect I haven’t mentioned is his sensitive portrayal of war memorials, and the preservation of trenches and destroyed villages which bear witness. As for the realism of the idea of establishing the Western Front Way as a long distance footpath/cycle path, Seldon's struggles to avoid busy roads and to stay anywhere near the multiple lines of the front for stretches at a time, combined with the sheer scale of the project, made it feel unlikely ever to be fully achieved.

The idea for this initiative goes back to a letter written by the young British officer Douglas Gillespie to his parents, shortly before his death on the Western Front. With such a noble enterprise, it is difficult to criticise this book in any way, but in some ways I did find it awkward to read. A deeply informed meditation on the First World War, an exploration of walking’s healing power, a formidable physical achievement… and above all a moving enactment of a modern pilgrimage. Apart from these outer challenges, the author had to fight some inner demons: he was still mourning the death of his wife, had lost his last job and the house that went with it, and last but certainly not least he had to fight his own body: the daily slog became quite exhausting and tiring.It is subtitled "Walking the Western Front Way" and so naturally contains lots of detail about Anthony Seldon's walking experiences. there are many layers to this book, many cultural references, insights, thoughts and intriguing speculation.