Soldier Songs. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1917. First Edition. A good clean copy in publisher’s green buckram, margins ruled in blind, title stamped in gilt to upper cover and spine.

Patrick MacGill (1889-1963) was an Irish journalist, poet and novelist, known as The Navvy Poet because he had worked as a navvy (a labourer) in Scotland before he began writing. When war broke out in 1914 MacGill served in the London Irish Rifles and was wounded in the Battle of Loos.

Along with several volumes of prose on the Great War, MacGill produced some excellent poetry chronicling the futility of this ‘war-to-end-wars,’ that stands alongside the works of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.