An unpublished typescript war diary of Major-General Sir Henry Cecil Lowther (1869-1940), compiled from the series of letters he sent home and fair copied with additions as a complete work. He presented this volume to his first cousin Hugh Cecil Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale (1857-1944), on Christmas 1923.

The forward reads : 'The Diary was written up more or less day by day, and was sent home in occasional instalments. There it was typed and circulated to the writer's family... The Diary is now typed exactly as originally written with the exception of a few obvious and necessary corrections of the first typescript'.

As commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, Scots Guards, Lowther was part of the British Expeditionary Force in the North France offensive of 1914 which included the First Battle of the Marne and the Battle of Aisne, during which Lowther was injured by a shell ('the missile was found lying on my breast bone') and hospitalised for 2 months. He describes Christmas Day 1914 as excessively dangerous with wounded Coldstream and Munster Guards lying injured and dying in no man's land with no armistice to retrieve the wounded: it prompts him to say 'This is certainly the most brutal war that has ever been known'.

Lowther met several notable figures during the War, including the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII), King George V, Sir Douglas Haig, and Winston Churchill. What is most striking is the chaos, confusion, and death that he records. On the 25th of January 1915 Lowther loses 850 men in his brigade through heavy shelling and attempted counter offensives and calls it 'one of the worst days of my life'. In another entry he admits 'there are several absolute mis-statements in it: but I have let them stand and send the diary home to show how little - when engaged in big operations - one knows of what is going on all round and how hard it is, with the best intentions, to ascertain the truth'.

In August 1915, after being present for the Battle of Neuve Chapelle and the Battle of Aubers, Lowther is promoted to be military secretary GHQ of the BEF in France and leaves the front.

Probably one of only a couple to survive: the only other copy we have been able to trace is in the Imperial War museum, described as a photocopy. The author had previously published a work on Big Game and in 1925 co-authored a history of the Scots Guards in WWI, undoubtedly drawing on his diary and rendering the publishing of his letters obsolete. It is also likely that, due to working in GHQ and swearing to the Official Secrets Act, many of Lowther's original war documents were destroyed, making any survivals extremely scarce.

4to (27 x 21 cm); typed transcript, 194 ll., presentation inscription to to first blank; half black calf, yellow cloth boards, gilt Lonsdale coronet to upper board, top edge gilt, slightly rubbed, very good.