Friends of a Kind

Matthew Mills Stevenson was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. His university degrees are from Bucknell and Columbia, and he spent a year abroad in London and Vienna with the Institute of European Studies. He moved to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1991. He is a contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine and has worked professionally in finance and investing. His essays and reporting have been published in many magazines, including, most recently, in CounterPunch. He is the author of many books, including Reading the Rails, Appalachia Spring, The Revolution as a Dinner Party (about China throughout its turbulent twentieth century), and Biking with Bismarck, about the Franco-Prussian wars and the Treaty of Versailles. His recent books are The View From Churchill, an introduction to Churchill’s extraordinary life, and Our Man in Iran, an account of travels across the Islamic Republic.

• I. T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia)Wool, EnglandClouds Hill: At home with Aircraftman ShawBovington: Lawrence's last rideMoreton: Across Thomas Hardy's Egdon HeathLawrence: A prince of our disorderTo Arabia: The young LawrenceSeven pillars of HollywoodWessex Tales: On the BikeHardy's Dorchester: The return of the outsiderII. Siegfried Sassoon Rides to the GunsThe Train to FromeMells: The great war in modern memoryWeirleigh and the Weald of Kent: To the houndsThe Unquiet Western Front: Siegfried's JourneyHeytesbury's Sassoon: A country gentlemanSassoon and Lawrence: Postwar friendsWarminster: Transporting memoirsIII. Graves: Hello to All ThatSassoon and Robert GravesRobert Graves at CharterhouseGraves, Lawrence and Rory StewartIV. Across the Lawrence Desert in Saudi ArabiaThe Legend Grows in AqabaA Theoretical Route into Saudi ArabiaThe Wadi Rum Stage SetA Frozen Desert BorderThe Hejaz City of TabukThe Closely-Watched Bus to MedinaA High-Speed HasSeaside Jeddah on the Red SeaA Lawrence Cruise to YenboA 1921 Cairo Conference Imagines Lines in the SandV. The John Buchan WayOxford: Unravelling Lord TweedsmuirBuchan After the Great WarElsfield Manor, Oxford: At home with the novelistPeebles, Scotland: Tramping with Richard HannayBuchan and John F. Kennedy: Kindred spiritsVI. Heart of Joseph ConradAlong the River ThamesSailing Toward PolandCanterbury TalesConrad and Lawrence: Confluent shipwrecksVII. The Riddles of Erskine ChildersDublinEngland at Sea: Childers issues a warningChilders: The making of Irish rebelsVIII. Winston Churchill in the TrenchesPlugstreetThe 1914 Christmas TruceMessines: Ireland on the Western FrontIX. Graves and Sassoon on the Western FrontSome Desperate GloryLions Led by DonkeysThe Black Hole of LoosArras: A Forlorn Plan of AttackCraiglockhart War Hospital: The battle for Sassoon's soulThe man who shot SassoonBelfast on the SommeThe Somme's Thiepval Monument: Site of mourningGraves and Sassoon: Once More to Mametz WoodAlbert and the Road to CorbieX. Wilfred Owen's Long RoadComing of Age Near LiverpoolOwen's Childhood: Woodside, Birkenhead, ShrewsburyThe Making of a Modern PoetOwen EnlistsXI. Raymond Asquith, Friend to ManyEchoes of War; in Amiens CathedralThe British High Command at Chateau QuerrieuThe Red Baron Falls to EarthWar Box Seats: Bois Francais above the SommeThe Death of Raymond AsquithA Dark Ride Toward the Hindenburg LineXII. Wilfred Owen: The Last FootstepsThe American Cut Grass at BellicourtJoncourt: Owen's Military CrossBeaurevoir to the Maison Forestiere OwenThe Long Shadows Over the Sambre-Oise CanalAn Owen FarewellXIII. Rupert Brooke, Lady Ottoline Morrell, and Sir EdwardMarsh: Defining the WarOn the Road to Birmingham and CoventryRemembering Rupert BrookeAt Rugby SchoolBack to Oxford and Garsington ManorLady Ottoline Morrell's Drawing RoomsSir Edward Marsh's Many Degrees of ConnectionGrantchester: Byronic Summer DaysGallipoli and the Distant Echoes of TroyXIV. The Last PostWar's End on SkyrosAcknowledgementsCopyright permissionsThe Cycling HistorianAbout the BicycleIndex

WHAT THE EXPERTS ARE SAYING about…FRIENDS OF A KIND, A Circle of Acquaintances Who Defined How We Remember the Great War, by Matthew Mills StevensonISBN 9781738497089, 300 pages, 12 B&W illustrations, paperback, RRP £20.00“It is always a keen pleasure to travel with Matthew Stevenson — and never more so than here, in the pages of Friends of a Kind. This beautifully written book paints in vivid hue a circle of friendship and humanity, which battled through a terrible moment in history. It tells a story of connection to the wider world, with insights that are timely.”Dr Susan Williams Senior Research Fellow, University of London, author of White Malice“Matthew Stevenson pursues the lives and deaths of his quarries quite literally, and his enthusiastic bicycle-borne pursuit intimately involves his readers in his quest. An utterly fascinating exploration of 20th century English literary lives.” Nigel Jones, author of Operation Bodyguard“A fascinating exploration of the networks of  a generation of British writers and politicians and how they were influenced by World War One.” Andrew Lownie, biographer of John Buchan“An extraordinary and powerful collage of the leading literary, political and society figures who dominated the First World War in Britain.  Lively and well written, Stevenson documents the unexpected relationships between them.  Traveling throughout Britain, the battlefields of France, and even going to the final resting place of Rupert Brook in the island of Skyros, Stevenson evokes the landscape and individuals responsible for the greatest literature to emerge from any war.” Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy Professor of History, University of Virginia“It is always a keen pleasure to travel with Matthew Stevenson — and never more so than here, in the pages of Friends of a Kind. This beautifully written book paints in vivid hue a circle of friendship and humanity, which battled through a terrible moment in history. It tells a story of connection to the wider world, with insights that are timely.”Dr Susan Williams Senior Research Fellow, University of London, author of White Malice“Matthew Stevenson pursues the lives and deaths of his quarries quite literally, and his enthusiastic bicycle-borne pursuit intimately involves his readers in his quest. An utterly fascinating exploration of 20th century English literary lives.” Nigel Jones, author of Operation Bodyguard“A fascinating exploration of the networks of  a generation of British writers and politicians and how they were influenced by World War One.” Andrew Lownie, biographer of John Buchan“An extraordinary and powerful collage of the leading literary, political and society figures who dominated the First World War in Britain.  Lively and well written, Stevenson documents the unexpected relationships between them.  Traveling throughout Britain, the battlefields of France, and even going to the final resting place of Rupert Brook in the island of Skyros, Stevenson evokes the landscape and individuals responsible for the greatest literature to emerge from any war.” Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy Professor of History, University of Virginia‘Superbly written, Friends of a Kind takes us on a great tour from the forests of England to the deserts of Arabia, with a promise to tell what once was and what remains. The result is a gripping tale of famous ghost warriors, neatly interwoven with the peregrinations of a contemporary and affable “cycling historian.” Maurin Picard, Des héros ordinaires “The subject of World War I never gets old. Of late I have been reading John Keegan’s excellent history, The First World War, which covers the many failures of diplomacy and the generals 1914-18. “Now, as a companion to Keegan's wonderful book, we have Matthew Stevenson’s Friends of a Kind, a journey of discovery to the front lines of the  important writers and poets of that war—Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence  among them."Read these books together and you will never think the same about that  devastating war.” John R MacArthur, publisher, Harper’s Magazine, New York“Stevenson explores, often on a Brompton bicycle, the literary, social and topographical connections in England, France and the Middle East,. offering penetrating insights into the characters and interests of TE Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, John Buchan and Joseph Conrad, to name only a few.  Raymond Asquith, Lord Oxford