Since leaving her job as a BBC Radio producer in 1973, Lyn Macdonald has established an unrivaled reputation as an author and historian of World War I. She has produced four volumes of superb popular history, remarkable for their extensive use of eyewitness accounts. She is the recording angel of the common soldier. "My intention," she says, "has been to tune in to the heartbeat of the experience of the people who lived through it." Besides drawing on the oceans of contemporary letters and diaries, she has captured the memories of a dwindling supply of veterans.