Wherever the Firing Line Extends: Ireland and the Western Front

Traces the involvement of the Irish in World War One. The First World War was the biggest conflict in Irish history. More men served and more men died than in all the wars before or since that the Irish fought in. Often forgotten at home and written out of Irish history, the Irish soldiers and their regiments found themselves more honoured in foreign fields. From the first shot monument in Mons to the plaque to the Royal Irish Lancers who liberated the town on Armistice Day 1918, Ronan McGreevy takes a tour of the Western Front. At a time when Ireland is revisiting its history and its place in the world, McGreevy looks at those places where the Irish made their mark and are remembered in the monuments, cemeteries and landscapes of France and Flanders. AUTHOR: Ronan McGreevy is a senior journalist with The Irish Times. He writes a regular column and features, and produces video content for The Irish Times website to support his written pieces. For the purpose of this book he will be travelling around Europe as part of his work with The Irish Times and serialization of elements of this work in the Irish Times is planned. SELLING POINTS: . An expert analysis, building on the original records and primary research . Written in a clear and accessible style, by professional Irish Times journalist . Author highly experienced in this field and with a significant media track record . To be supported by video content on the Irish Times website and dedicated WW1 portal on Irish Times online curated by the author

About the Author :
RONAN McGREEVY is a journalist and videographer. He has worked for The Times, the BBC and Sky News. He is currently a journalist and videographer with The Irish Times. His first book is Wherever the Firing Line Extends: Ireland and the Western Front. He is the editor of Centenary – Ireland Remembers 1916, the official Irish State book marking the centenary of the Easter Rising, published in 2017.

Review :
Though a century has passed since the First World War, many in Ireland are discovering its remarkable and continuing legacy for the first time. They are learning that for many on this island it was our war and is our story. Ronan McGreevy’s book helps the ongoing unpacking of that complex story. It is a very opportune and important addition to the growing body of scholarly literature on the Irish in the Great War. Ronan focuses on the monuments the war left behind, providing a useful guide for the growing numbers of visitors to those foreign fields where so many young Irish and many other lives were lost and from where home-coming survivors, for the rest of their lives carried grim memories often too raw to share. The superlative and definitive account of Ireland in World War I The best of books are those which you never wish to finish and put down. Perhaps even finer are those works which upon finishing you know will return for the magic of its authorship and its content. This is one of the latter. It’s a great read. And, unlike many tomes about that war, it’s an easy read. Highly recommended. My colleague’s passion for his subject and meticulous research has resulted in a valuable historical work, rich in compassion, documenting the Irish contribution to the Great War. A brilliant book Ronan McGreevy has written a vivid and endlessly informative study of Irish sites of memory of the Great War in France and Belgium, though in the case of nationalist Ireland they are really sites of non-memory. As the memory changes, so new sites are created and old ones rediscovered. The great merit of McGreevy’s book is to demonstrate that process for Ireland’s Great War over the past century. This is a wonderful interwoven account of the legacy and story of World War I which mixes history, personal stories and contemporary assessment. It is written with the brio and economy of a journalist and is an absorbing account, both moving and at times depressing in terms of the war's sustained and seemingly pointless loss. He has written an utterly absorbing book which brings alive the heroism, drama and struggle of the wider conflagration in Europe - and Ireland's part of it. No better travelling companion is the book Wherever the Firing Line Extends - Ireland and the Western Front which takes you on a journey through the “war to end all wars” by visiting the places where the Irish soldiers made their mark and are commemorated in the monuments, cemeteries and landscapes of France and Flanders. 'Wherever the Firing Line Extends' can be used as guide book on the ground, and at the same time is a fine addition to the canon of publications on the double identity of the Irish soldiers in World War I. While the book is focusing on individual stories in the face of industrial scale slaughter, it is the new approach of appreciating the memorials later generations left for these men that makes it a refreshing read. After all it is for us, the living, that these memorials exist. They remind us not to repeat the mistakes of the past.