Friends of a Kind

This book is a journey of discovery as Matthew Mills Stevenson, affectionately known as the Cycling Historian, investigates the people, the places and the poetry that define how we remember the First World War.
Stevenson's reading, begun by the fireplace in the darkness of a Swiss winter, hinted at the extraordinary network of friendship that connected so many of the writers of that time. Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves served in the same regiment. Wilfred Owen spent time with Sassoon recuperating in Craiglockhart, a Scottish hospital. Winston Churchill shared friendships with T. E. Lawrence, Sassoon, Thomas Hardy and Erskine Childers. John Buchan, author of Greenmantle, admired Lawrence. And a constant presence in their lives is Churchill's private secretary, Edward Marsh.
When spring came Stevenson decided that these men would only come alive for him if he visited the places where they had lived or fought in the war. So, with his faithful folding Brompton bicycle, he set off to unlock a literary puzzle.

Matthew Mills Stevenson was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. His university degrees are from Bucknell and Columbia, and he spent a year abroad in London and Vienna with the Institute of European Studies. He moved to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1991. He is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine and has worked professionally in finance and investing. His essays and reporting have been published in many magazines, including, most recently, in CounterPunch. He is the author of many books, including Reading the Rails, Appalachia Spring, The Revolution as a Dinner Party (about China throughout its turbulent twentieth century), and Biking with Bismarck, about the Franco-Prussian wars and the Treaty of Versailles. His recent books are The View From Churchill, an introduction to Churchill'sextraordinary life, and Our Man in Iran, an account of travels across theIslamic Republic.