Apart from these outer challenges, the author had to fight some inner demons: he was still mourning the death of his wife, had lost his last job and the house that went with it, and last but certainly not least he had to fight his own body: the daily slog became quite exhausting and tiring. Nonetheless, he was forced to give up his plans to become a doctor and suffered from violent mood swings.

The War of Independence gave George Washington a national profile that helped him become the new country’s first head of state. His walk had echoes of the exploits of nineteenth century explorers - not only did he undertake it when most of us weren't travelling because of the Covid pandemic, it seemed to involve very vague planning, carrying no paper maps, and the mad inspiration of not taking any spare clothing to reduce the weight of stuff to carry. As for the realism of the idea of establishing the Western Front Way as a long distance footpath/cycle path, Seldon's struggles to avoid busy roads and to stay anywhere near the multiple lines of the front for stretches at a time, combined with the sheer scale of the project, made it feel unlikely ever to be fully achieved. I can't say this reflects my own experience - when I was at school, the Second World War was far more prominent and engaging as a historical subject - but Seldon's passion for the horrific events of the period comes through strongly and I learned a huge amount.The route of his 1,000 kilometre journey was inspired by a young British soldier of the First World War, Alexander Douglas Gillespie, who dreamed of creating a ‘Via Sacra’ that the men, women and children of Europe could walk to honour the fallen. While I was familiar with the extent of the battles in which the British took part, Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele, I did not know the full, terrible, extent of the French battle of Verdun, and found the chapter on this very moving. Of course there are many pure history books with more detail about WW1 but this book is multi-faceted with additional honest detail about the Author's hopes and even dreams. I learned a whole lot about WW1 and, war in general, and enjoyed Seldon's personal bits about the challenge in accomplishing such a big walk at 68 years, and the bits and pieces he lets fly about his family life and blossoming new relationship.

I myself have walked extensively and written about my experiences and I definitely sympathise with the Author's gruesome tales about blisters and Compeed plasters! The only slightly jarring note for me is the way the author turns his grief around the recent death of his wife into something a bit close to self-pity and his attempts to denigrate himself feel a little like false modesty.

Corvus Atlantic’s commercial fiction list which includes women’s, historical, romance, sci-fi, crime and thriller. Touching on grief, loss and the legacy of war, The Path of Peace is the extraordinary story of Anthony's epic walk, an unforgettable act of remembrance and a triumphant rediscovery of what matters most in life. We not only get an awful lot of detail about aspects of the First World War that are likely to be unfamiliar to most readers (certainly me), we also get to share in a romantic dream. After that, he wrote, he hoped to “send every man and child in Western Europe on pilgrimage along that Via Sacra, so that they might think and learn what war means from the silent witnesses on either side”. Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe’s most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres.

Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe's most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres.The idea for this initiative goes back to a letter written by the young British officer Douglas Gillespie to his parents, shortly before his death on the Western Front. Mobile meditation" describes the long distance walking experience but like the book, who can guarantee that trudging along you will find the solutions to life's great questions! To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Some of his problems, Seldon now suspects, can be traced back to the psychological aftershocks of the great war. However, as every experienced walker knowns, walking brings peace of mind and in the end he found it apart from possible routing for the “Western Front Way”.

A combination of introspective diary, war diary and travel writing, I'm not going to lie, it's made me interested in doing this walk. Seldon was knighted in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to education and modern political history. this would be a 'Via Sacra' which would provide a pilgrimage route to enable the inhabitants of Western Europe to 'think and learn what war means.