In the days before long range weapons with pinpoint accuracy, and the capability to destroy enemy targets without even setting foot in their country, we used to fight with swords, then muskets, then rifles.

Unfortunately, military tactics did not keep pace with the technology of war, which is why so many young men walked in a straight line slowly across the muddy fields of France to die in a hail of machine gun bullets. Many stories of the horror of The Great War have been told; what makes Birdsong different is that it deals with the legacy that remained in the form of those who lived through it.

Birdsong is two stories, set sixty years apart. As it progresses, it jumps back and forward through time between Stephen Wraysford (a young lieutenant in the British Army ), and his progeny, Elizabeth, as she attempts to uncover who he was, who he loved and to remember what was lost, through his journals.

The decisions that Wraysford made in the trenches of 1916 help Elizabeth to uncover the answers she seeks, in post swinging London, sixty years later.

Birdsong is in places erotic, sad, yet always moving. I think it is an important book, because it reminds us that the decisions that we make today can affect the future of others in quite remarkable ways.

If there are any faults in this book, I would have to say that the character of Elizabeth is not as fleshed out as that of Wraysford, but given the nature of the book, it is possible that Faulks wrote it this way for a reason.

Birdsong is not light reading, and it is not a book that will go down in the annals of history as one of the great works of our time, but it is a book that will make you look back on the decisions made by your recent ancestors when they fought to defend your freedoms; perhaps it will affect your decisions if you are called upon to defend your family’s future…