BEST LOVE TO ALL The Letters and Diaries of Captain Eric Rigby-Jones, Mc and Bar and his Experiences as a Young Officer with the Liverpool Pals on the Western Front in 1917 and 1918

This book is exhaustively researched and draws heavily on battalion war diaries and other memoirs. Unlike many books based on personal diaries it sets Eric’s own detailed, vivid, and often humorous accounts within their broader military, political and social context, and highlights the many close ties that bound the officers and men of the Liverpool Pals together. It also introduces a wide range of characters including Lord Derby, the Secretary of State of War and ‘King of Lancashire’, who was instrumental in creating the Pals; his younger brother, Brigadier Stanley, who commanded them; Johnny Douglas, the England cricket captain, who was Eric’s battalion commander; Brigadier Robert White, who sent Eric on a suicide mission in March 1918 and who had been tried and jailed for his part in the Jameson Raid in 1895; and Aidan Chavasse, the youngest son of the Bishop of Liverpool and brother of the double VC-winner, Noel Chavasse, who was killed during a Pals’ trench raid at Ypres.