The First World War was one of seemingly endless and unremitting waste and sacrifice. 'Who will remember, passing through this Gate, The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?' was Siegfried Sassoon's anguished cry for those whose sacrifice seemed futile. Yet eighty years later it is because of Sassoon and his fellow poets - Owen, Rosenberg, Sorley and many others - that we do remember.

This new anthology will serve as an introduction to the poetry of that great conflict, and the inclusion of a number of rarely anthologised poets, many from the ranks, as well as anonymous poems and songs, serves to bring a quality of freshness to the selection.