This is the pictorial story of the triumph of the human spirit through conflict, starting with the Second Boer War at the start of the 20th century through to the World Wars. These thought-provoking images of leaders, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and those who were committed to their care and healing, demonstrate that even during the worst of times, simple human compassion and collaboration often prevails.

Through featuring many memorable yet relatively unknown images, some taken by ordinary soldiers rather than official war photographers, and others gathered from great UK photographic archives such as the Hulton-Deutsch Collection, the Keystone library, Alamy, and the National Library of Scotland, the great treasures of our pictorial history hidden in these collections is revealed.