Edgar Wallace

The 4.15 from Victoria to Lewes had been held up at Three Bridges in consequence of a derailment and, though John Lexman was fortunate enough to catch a belated connection to Beston Tracey, the wagonette which was the sole communication between the village and the outside world had gone. "If you can wait half an hour, Mr. Lexman," said the station-master, "I will telephone up to the village and get Briggs to come down for you." John Lexman looked out upon the dripping landscape and shrugged his shoulders. "I'll walk," he said shortly and, leaving his bag in the station-master's care and buttoning his mackintosh to his chin, he stepped forth resolutely into the rain to negotiate the two miles which separated the tiny railway station from Little Tracey. The downpour was incessant and likely to last through the night. The high hedges on either side of the narrow road were so many leafy cascades; the road itself was in places ankle deep in mud. He stopped under the protecting cover of a big tree to fill and light his pipe and with its bowl turned downwards continued his walk. But for the driving rain which searched every crevice and found every chink in his waterproof armor, he preferred, indeed welcomed, the walk. The road from Beston Tracey to Little Beston was associated in his mind with some of the finest situations in his novels. It was on this road that he had conceived "The Tilbury Mystery." Between the station and the house he had woven the plot which had made "Gregory Standish" the most popular detective story of the year. For John Lexman was a maker of cunning plots. If, in the literary world, he was regarded by superior persons as a writer of "shockers," he had a large and increasing public who were fascinated by the wholesome and thrilling stories he wrote, and who held on breathlessly to the skein of mystery until they came to the denouement he had planned.

In August 1914, after almost a decade of sabre-rattling, arms races and localised wars, Europe erupted into the greatest conflict man had ever seen. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand saw the beginning of the war to end all wars, a war that it was reckoned would be over by Christmas but which, in reality, lasted over five years. Britain’s small peacetime army was no match for the millions of soldiers that Germany and Austro-Hungary could muster, and Lord Kitchener was almost a lone voice demanding that Britain mobilise as he could see the war would not be over by Christmas, or indeed even the next Christmas. His recruiting drive, etched into our memories by Alfred Leete’s ‘Your Country Needs You’ recruiting poster, saw the formation of over fifty ‘Pals’ regiments, as well as regiments based on occupation and even schooling. By 1915, these men were ready to go to war, a war that saw tens of thousands of them killed and injured, including some 584 out of 720 Accrington Pals in twenty minutes on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. 60,000 British soldiers died or were seriously injured that day, and due to the unique way the men were enlisted, the pain was focused on those towns and cities that had provided Kitchener’s New Army. Edgar Wallace tells us how this volunteer army was trained, and the book is profusely illustrated with views. It also has a new introduction looking back at what happened to this volunteer army, and how it changed the face of Britain for ever.