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Tacy Atkinson: The German, the Turk and the Devil Made a Triple Alliance: Harpoot diaries, 1908-1917 (Taderon Press, 2000) £14
Tacy Atkinson (1870-1937) was an American who lived with her family in the Ottoman empire from 1902 to 1917. She witnessed the destruction of the Armenians in 1915, and her diaries now constitute an invaluable resource for historians of the period.
Edmund Blunden: Undertones of War (Penguin, 2000) £8.99
Blunden served with the Royal Sussex Regiment from 1915 to 1919, fought at Ypres and the Battle of the Somme and received the Military Cross. His memoir, originally published in 1928, offers one of the great prose accounts of the war, but also contains lyrical passages describing home and the English countryside.
Vera Brittain: Testament of Youth (Virago, 1992) £9.99
Brittain's memoir, first published in 1933, recounts her experiences as a nurse with the Voluntry Aid Detachment (VAD) during the First World War, serving in both Britain and France. Her harrowing experiences led her to become involved with the peace movement in later life. This memoir is one of the few to offer a woman's perspective on the war. This edition has a foreword by the former MP Shirley Williams, Brittain's daughter.
George Coppard: With a Machine Gun to Cambrai: A story of the First World War (Cassell Military, 1999) £6.99
Coppard joined the British army when he was only 16, became a member of a Wickers machine-gun unit and fought at the Battle of Cambrai, receiving a Military Medal for bravery. His memoirs - only published in 1969 - were a great success when they were eventually released.
Robert Graves: Goodbye to All That (Penguin, 1999) £6.99
Graves served with the Royal Welch Fusiliers and was seriously injured in 1916. He is well known for his war poetry, which he produced continuously throughout the war. His memoir was also highly successful, although it created a rift between himself and Siegfried Sassoon
Paul von Hindenburg: Out of My Life (Howard Fertig, 1996). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Hindenburg was Germany's leading general of the war and formed the Third Supreme Command
Piete Kuhr: There We'll Meet Again: Young German girl's diary of the First World War, translated by Walter G Wright (W Wright, 1998) £9.75
Piete (later the artist known as Jo Mihaly) was 12 when she began this diary, which is dense with details of daily life in the town of Schneidemuhl (now in Poland) throughout the First World War.
T E Lawrence: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A triumph (Penguin, 2000) £10.99 A mysterious and enigmatic character, Lawrence served as a liaison officer in Palestine and participated in the Arab revolt against Turkish rule. This memoir, originally published in a limited edition in 1926, not only describes his wartime experiences but contains a more personal and spiritual element.
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck: My Reminiscences of East Africa (1920). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Lettow-Vorbeck was a German colonel who led German and indigenous troops against British, French and Belgian forces in several parts of Africa. His forces were never defeated and he finally surrendered several days after the Armistice. His memoirs offer an interesting account of the war in a generally overlooked theatre but should, in some places, be treated with a degree of caution.
David Lloyd George: War Memoirs (Simon Publications, 2001) £19.95-26.95 per part (print on demand)
Lloyd George was minister of munitions in Asquith's coalition government and prime minister from 1916 to 1922. His memoirs offer illuminating insights into the conduct of the war but tend to show in the best possible light at all times and should be balanced by reading other accounts of the same events.
Erich Ludendorff: My War Memories 1914-1918 (1920). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Architect of some of Germany's greatest victories during the war, Ludendorff fled to Sweden immediately after the war and remained there for two years. Following his return to Germany, he participated in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch and represented the Nazis in the Reichstag 1924-28. He His memoirs tend to perpetuate the 'stab in the back' myth of Germany's defeat.
Benito Mussolini: War Diaries (Casa Editrice del Partito Nazionale Fascista, 1923). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Mussolini served as a colonel in the Italian army during the war. His eight volumes of diaries follow his life from his expulsion from the Socialist Party in 1914 until the end of 1933.
Frank Richards: Old Soldiers Never Die (Naval and Military Press, 2001) £9.95 (print on demand)
Richards joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1901 and served in India and Burma. He fought in many of the major battles during the First World War but emerged remarkably unscathed. His memoir - considered to be one of the finest written by an ordinary soldier - offers a different perspective from officers' memoirs.
Erwin Rommel: Rommel in His Own Words, edited by John Pimlott (Greenhill Books, 1994). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Rommel served as a lieutenant in the First World War and fought on the Western, Italian and Transylvanian fronts. This book describes his experiences during that time and offers his philosophy of warfare, battles and leaders.
Ernst Toller: I Was a German (Pimlico, to be republished in October 2003) £12.50
A German Jew, Toller joined the German army when war was declared, but his nationalism and patriotism were severely dented by the scale of the suffering he witnessed. He subsequently became a socialist and pacifist, writing political plays and poetry. His work was banned in Germany when Hitler came to power. This autobiography was first published in 1934.