Empires of the Dead

Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction.




The extraordinary and forgotten story of the building of the World War One cemeteries, due to the efforts of one remarkable man, Fabian Ware.



In the wake of the First World War, Britain and her Empire faced the enormous question of how to bury the dead. Critically-acclaimed author David Crane describes how the horror of the slaughter motivated an ambulance commander named Fabian Ware to establish the Commonwealth war cemeteries.


Behind these famous monuments – the Cenotaph, Tyne Cot, Menin Gate, Etaples amongst them – lies a deeply moving story; ‘Empires of the Dead’ chronicles a generation coming to terms with grief on a colossal scale.