A Hundred Years to Arras

Robert is twenty-three years old, a farmer’s boy from Somerset, who joins up against his father’s wishes. Robert forms fast friendships with Stanley, who lied about his age to go to war, and Ernest, whose own slippery account betrays a life on the streets.

Their friendship is forged through gas attacks, trench warfare, freezing in trenches, hunting rats, and chasing down kidnapped regimental dogs. Their life is one of mud and mayhem but also love and laughs.

This is the story of Robert’s journey to Arras and back, his dreams and memories drawing him home. His story is that of the working-class Tommy, the story of thousands of young men who were caught in the collision between old rural values and the relentlessness of a new kind of war. It is a story that connects the past with the present through land, love and blood.

'An elegy for a world swept away by the horrors of the First World War. A book written with so much love; beautifully written and deeply moving' Philip Gwynne Jones, author of 'The Venetian Legacy'.

A human story about an inhuman war
'The book follows young Robert from his family farm in Devon to the horrors of trench warfare on the Western Front during the First World War. You are there with the young soldiers as they struggle with the mud, confusion and death all around them, some stoic, some nervous, some cracking jokes, some succumbing to the unremitting pressure. Daily privations, brutal battles and the struggle to maintain some semblance of dignity are vividly portrayed. The book skilfully blends historic events with fictionalised ones, a feat that must have entailed a huge amount of research.
Yet Cobley never forgets that it is human lives he is writing about, not historic figures. And in the end it is the camaraderie of the young soldiers, in particular the friendship between Robert and Ernest, that shines through and remained with this reader – as well as the touching search for a missing dog. A wonderfully evocative and powerfully written book. A reminder, if one is needed, as we see the images from Ukraine, of the terrible waste of war'. (Sue Clark, author of 'A Novel Solution')

Convincing and moving depiction of boys at war
'JM Cobley's novel, based on family history pieced together with tremendous imaginative precision, has been haunting me since I read it. There are scenes here that take on a dreamlike unreality, not just the nightmares we are familiar with, but the dislocation that occurs when mere boys are transported together to foreign soil to fight battles beyond their understanding or control. There's a fairytale fleeting romance with a French innkeeper's daughter, there's a recurring dog, adopted and then lost by a neurasthenia-suffering young officer out of his depth and nearly out of his mind. And then there are the full horrors of life in the trenches, the growing rot that's both literal and metaphorical. All this, and the love of three comrades, is captured brilliantly by Cobley in A HUNDRED YEARS TO ARRAS. The novel culminates in a personal narrative that breaks down the barrier between the past and now, and which I found deeply moving'. (Patrick Kincaid, author of 'The Continuity Girl')