Friends of a Kind

WHAT THE EXPERTS ARE SAYING about…FRIENDS OF A KIND, A Circle of Acquaintances Who Defined How We Remember the Great War, by Matthew Mills Stevenson

ISBN 9781738497089, 300 pages, 12 B&W illustrations, paperback, RRP £20.00


“It is always a keen pleasure to travel with Matthew Stevenson — and never more so than here, in the pages of Friends of a Kind. This beautifully written book paints in vivid hue a circle of friendship and humanity, which battled through a terrible moment in history. It tells a story of connection to the wider world, with insights that are timely.”
Dr Susan Williams Senior Research Fellow, University of London, author of White Malice

“Matthew Stevenson pursues the lives and deaths of his quarries quite literally, and his enthusiastic bicycle-borne pursuit intimately involves his readers in his quest. An utterly fascinating exploration of 20th century English literary lives.” Nigel Jones, author of Operation Bodyguard

“A fascinating exploration of the networks of  a generation of British writers and politicians and how they were influenced by World War One.” Andrew Lownie, biographer of John Buchan

“An extraordinary and powerful collage of the leading literary, political and society figures who dominated the First World War in Britain.  Lively and well written, Stevenson documents the unexpected relationships between them.  Traveling throughout Britain, the battlefields of France, and even going to the final resting place of Rupert Brook in the island of Skyros, Stevenson evokes the landscape and individuals responsible for the greatest literature to emerge from any war.” Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy Professor of History, University of Virginia



“It is always a keen pleasure to travel with Matthew Stevenson — and never more so than here, in the pages of Friends of a Kind. This beautifully written book paints in vivid hue a circle of friendship and humanity, which battled through a terrible moment in history. It tells a story of connection to the wider world, with insights that are timely.”
Dr Susan Williams Senior Research Fellow, University of London, author of White Malice

“Matthew Stevenson pursues the lives and deaths of his quarries quite literally, and his enthusiastic bicycle-borne pursuit intimately involves his readers in his quest. An utterly fascinating exploration of 20th century English literary lives.” Nigel Jones, author of Operation Bodyguard

“A fascinating exploration of the networks of  a generation of British writers and politicians and how they were influenced by World War One.” Andrew Lownie, biographer of John Buchan

“An extraordinary and powerful collage of the leading literary, political and society figures who dominated the First World War in Britain.  Lively and well written, Stevenson documents the unexpected relationships between them.  Traveling throughout Britain, the battlefields of France, and even going to the final resting place of Rupert Brook in the island of Skyros, Stevenson evokes the landscape and individuals responsible for the greatest literature to emerge from any war.” Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy Professor of History, University of Virginia

‘Superbly written, Friends of a Kind takes us on a great tour from the forests of England to the deserts of Arabia, with a promise to tell what once was and what remains. The result is a gripping tale of famous ghost warriors, neatly interwoven with the peregrinations of a contemporary and affable “cycling historian.” Maurin Picard, Des héros ordinaires 


“The subject of World War I never gets old. Of late I have been reading John Keegan’s excellent history, The First World War, which covers the many failures of diplomacy and the generals 1914-18. 

“Now, as a companion to Keegan's wonderful book, we have Matthew Stevenson’s Friends of a Kind, a journey of discovery to the front lines of the  important writers and poets of that war—Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence  among them.

"Read these books together and you will never think the same about that  devastating war.” John R MacArthur, publisher, Harper’s Magazine, New York


“Stevenson explores, often on a Brompton bicycle, the literary, social and topographical connections in England, France and the Middle East,. offering penetrating insights into the characters and interests of TE Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, John Buchan and Joseph Conrad, to name only a few.  Raymond Asquith, Lord Oxford