Between 1 July and 18 November 1916 Britain s new volunteer army took the leading role in a battle on the Western Front for the first time. The Somme off ensive was intended to achieve a decisive victory for the British and French Allies over the Germans, yet the Allies failed to achieve all of their objectives and the war was to continue for another two years.
Anthony Richards has worked at the Imperial War Museum for over twenty years, and since 2010 has been in his current role as Head of Documents and Sound. He has overseen the acquisition and cataloguing of documents relating to the personal experience of warfare from 1914 to present, as well as the museum's on-going oral history programme. Richards is a Modern History graduate from Queen Mary College, London, and holds an MA in Archives and Record Management from University College London. He has provided historical advice for television and radio productions, including the BAFTA-nominated ITV series The Great War: The People’s Story, and is the author of The Somme: A Visual History (2016). He has also written extensively on military history since 1914 for popular publications, recently contributing to the Sunday Telegraph's Inside the First World War monthly supplements. Richards is the author of In Their Own Words, which is published by IWM in July 2016.
