Unhappy Far-Off Things

In this slim volume, however, Dunsany dwells on the horror of the First World War. Unlike most war memoirs he speaks very little of himself or even of the fighting. Instead we are treated to the grim spectacle of the wreckage behind the lines. He ponders the destroyed French villages and the few surviving remnants of happier times the way a Georgian or Victorian traveller would have described the ruins of Greece.