Country Life looks back at World War I

published 11 November 2024

Back in 2014, Country Life began a 10-part series looking at the history of the First World War as revealed by our outstanding archive. Published weekly since 1897, the magazine was still young when Britain declared war on August 4, 1914. It had largely ignored the Boer War, but the scale of the looming conflict made the subject impossible to escape.

Although Country Life never attempted to compete with the daily reportage of newspapers, its own character as a highly produced weekly magazine of catholic tastes made it ideal for providing context for the news and illustrating what papers could only describe. Professional photographs of topical places were regularly published in articles ostensibly concerned with history or culture.

Country Life doesn't offer a rounded account of the First World War, but each issue is a complete authentic product of its time. As such, a unique authoritative history of the First World War — fascinating, curious, poignant and delightful by turns — may be discovered within its pages. A selection of these images and articles is available online via the links below.

PART I: THE WORLD AT WAR

PART II: WOMEN & THE WAR

PART III: THE WAR AT SEA

PART IV: CHILDREN & THE WAR

PART V: THE WAR IN THE TRENCHES

PART VI: ADVERTISING & THE WAR

PART VII: THE WAR IN THE AIR

PART VIII: HORSES & THE WAR

PART IX: THE WOUNDED & PRISONERS

PART X: WAR MEMORIALS

OFFICIAL WAR ARTIST: SIR MUIRHEAD BONE

Landing supplies at Helles Beach, Gallipoli, 1915. The Gallipoli Campaign — also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli or the Battle of Canakkale — took place on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire (now Gelibolu in modern day Turkey) between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War. A joint British and French operation was mounted to capture the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (Istanbul) and secure a sea route to Russia. The attempt failed, with heavy casualties on both sides.

The tragic story of George Moor, the 18-year-old who won a Victoria Cross at Gallipoli and survived the Somme, only to die days before the end of the First World War

Second Lieutenant George Moor was a teenager who signed up for service at the outbreak of the First World War

Injured Indian soldiers of the British Army at the Brighton Pavilion, converted into a military hospital in 1915.

Ten stately homes which became hospitals during the First World War

To mark 100 years since the end of the First World War, The Royal British Legion draws our attention back

Battle of The Somme: The work of Muirhead Bone, Britain’s official war artist during the First World War (Image via ©Country Life Picture Library)

The unique and extraordinary images of the First World War created by Britain's first-ever official war artist

KJTK60 FIRST WORLD WAR ARMISTICE November 1918. British soldiers in France celebrate the signing of the Armistice

'There are some things that never will be reproduced if the world lives a million years': What it was like to be alive at the end of the First World War

They cheered, they cried, they laughed, they danced in the streets. Almost 100 years to the day since it was

A soldier with a trench cello of the type used by by Harold Triggs, pictured in a French trench in 1914. (Photo by Neurdein/Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

In Focus: The trench cello which brought the joy of music to the First World War

The men who spent years in the trenches of France and Belgium found all manner of ways to bring a

Edward Burra, 'The Snack Bar' (oil on canvas, 1930; © The estate of Edward Burra, courtesy Lefevre Fine Art, London

In Focus: The evocative, sensual masterpiece created in the wake of the First World War

Edward Burra was too young to have fought in the First World War, but his powerful oil painting The Snack