War diaries now available at click of a button
The war diaries of poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon have been made available online by Cambridge University library - just in time for the start of the First World War centenary.
It's part of the library's project which aims to highlight the horrors of the Great War.
More than four thousand pages of poetry, sketches and early drafts of Sassoon's Soldier's Declaration have been digitised.
The poems include previously unpublished material along with early drafts of some of his best-known works including an early version of The Dug-Out with an additional, excised verse.
The notebooks were small enough to be carried in the pocket of his army tunic, and he used them to draft poetry, make pencil or ink sketches, list members of his battalion and their fates, make notes on military briefings, and draw diagrams of the trenches.
The images of them show mud from the trenches and spilled wax, presumably as he sat writing in his dug-out by candlelight.
