Lyn Macdonald

Lyn Macdonald,[1] (31 May 1929 – 1 March 2021)[2] was a British military historian, one of relatively few women in the field.[3] Macdonald was best known for a series of books on the First World War that draw on first hand accounts of surviving veterans.

For those of a similar name, see Lynn McDonald (disambiguation).

Life

Macdonald lived near Cambridge, England, and worked as a BBC radio producer until 1973, when she began working on a documentary with the Old Comrades Association of the 13th (Service) Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, who were visiting the battlefields of the Western Front.[4][5] The first of her influential books took its title, They Called It Passchendaele, from a poem by Siegfried Sassoon. Other works included Somme.[6] In 1988, she led a party of veterans to the Western Front, accompanied by Sebastian Faulks, who was inspired by the experience to write his novel Birdsong.[7]

Macdonald bequeathed an archive of about 600 recordings of interviews with veterans of the First World War to the Imperial War Museum.[5]

Literature
  • They Called It Passchendaele (1978).
  • The Roses of No Man's Land (1980).
  • Somme (1983), a history of the legendary and horrifying battle that has haunted the minds of succeeding generations.[6]
  • 1914: The Days of Hope (1987).
  • 1914-1918: Voices and Images of the Great War (1988).
  • 1915: The Death of Innocence (1993),
  • To the Last Man: Spring 1918 (1998).
  • At the Going Down of the Sun, 365 soldiers from the Great War. Co-writer with Ian Connerty, Sir Martin Gilbert, Peter Hart, Lyn MacDonald and Nigel Steel, Lannoo, Tielt, 2001.

References
  1. Lyn MacDonald, Penguin Books authors
  2. Holland, James (21 April 2021). "Lyn Macdonald obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 April 2021.
  3. Michael Howard (20 August 2008). A Part of History: Aspects of the British Experience of the First World War. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-8264-9813-7.
  4. Lyn Macdonald, Macmillan authors
  5. "Lyn Macdonald obituary". The Times. 8 April 2021. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
  6. Rachel Cooke (28 June 2016). "The books that honour the bloodiest of battles". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
  7. Sebastian Faulks (15 September 2017). "Back to the first world war front line with Tommy – archive, 1993". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
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