In 1914, the First World War broke out, and from the very beginning schoolboys across Britain signed up for to fight. Later many more were conscripted into the army. Among them were old boys from Britain's most famous public school, Eton. Thousands of them flocked to the front, with many of them stepping out of the classroom, into the army and onto the battlefields before they had left their teenage years behind. Over 1,200 of them would not return.

Historian Alexandra Churchill's groundbreaking narrative recounts the history of the Great War from the viewpoint of an extraordinary band of brothers, from the banks of the Thames as they worked and played in privilege to the ghastly realities of war in the fields of France, Belgium and beyond.