The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme commemorates the more than 72,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Battle of the Somme, but whose remains have never been identified. As part of Profile’s excellent ‘Wonders of the World’ series, Gavin Stamp gives a detailed history of Sir Edwin Lutyens’s monument and explains its enduring significance. ‘This book is a gem,’ Jane Ridley wrote in the Sunday Telegraph. ‘I found it utterly absorbing, and read it in a single sitting. Stamp is a lifelong admirer of Lutyens, and he knows more than anyone else about his work, but this book is more than architectural history. It is an eloquent, moving lament for the futile waste and industrialised killing of the First World War, and indeed of the 20th century – an elegy which resonates powerfully today.’

Profile Books Ltd | Paperback 224 pp. |ISBN: 9781861978967