The First World War: The Essential Guide to Sources in the UK National Archives (review)

Ian Beckett has produced a most useful guide to the World War I records in the Public Record Office, Kew, London. These records are enormous in extent, and although the Public Record Office (PRO) provides leaflets to help the researcher, and a useful computer reference system, such guides do no more than give the reader a start. In contrast, Beckett has marshalled and listed an extraordinary number of document holdings according to department, series and piece numbers, and in order to make sense of all this, has divided the book up into a number of relevant chapters. These chapters are: The Higher Direction of the War; New Ways of War; the Nation in Arms; and War, State and Society. Within these chapters, there are also subheadings. For example, New Ways of War has the subheadings of: Science and War, The War on Land, The War at Sea, The War in the Air, and Absorbing the Lessons. Then, within these subheadings, there are further divisions, as the book groups together departmental records relevant to a particular topic, political issue, campaign, category, or event. For example, the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 is for the most part included in the chapter New Ways of War, under the subheading of The War on Land, and the relevant records of this topic are arranged in alphabetic departmental order, as with all other topics. Further, each departmental file number has a brief discussion of the contents of the file.

Thus, for the Gallipoli campaign, the book starts off with ADM (Admiralty) 1, dealing with naval operational orders and results at Gallipoli, progresses through other ADM files, and then turns to AIR 1, which encompasses air operational records on Gallipoli. Next is CAB (Cabinet) 1, and then a large number of Cabinet files, of which probably CAB 19 is the most important, containing the records and correspondence of the post- campaign Dardanelles Commission. Following these files come the Foreign Office and Home Office files (FO and HO), as they relate to Gallipoli, and then the various PRO (Public Record Office) files (e.g., PRO 30/57 contains the important Kitchener Gallipoli correspondence). Finally, a very extensive series of Gallipoli WO (War Office) files are listed, ranging from WO 32 (Appreciations) to WO 95 (War Diaries) to WO 317 (photographs). Hence, for the new researcher approaching the Gallipoli campaign for the first time, these pages provide an absolutely essential and all encompassing guide to what documents are available in the PRO on this topic, and also briefly and importantly, what is the content of each departmental document.

Beckett has done a masterful job of making sense of the astonishingly extensive World War I records in the PRO, and of bringing together files according to each significant topic. However, even Beckett cannot save those records that seem to have gone missing for ever; for example, the CAB 45 correspondence between officers involved in the Passchendaele campaign, and the official historian, Brigadier General J. E. Edmonds, has disappeared, and perusal of the pages devoted to this campaign in Beckett's book (Third Ypres in the index), confirms the loss of this very significant series.

In summary, no one involved in researching World War I can afford to be without this essential book, and it should also be in every library with an interest in World War I.