The journal of a disappointed man

Begun when its author was 13 years old, the Journal at first catalogues Barbellion's misadventures in the Devon countryside - collecting birds' eggs, spying girls through binoculars - but evolves into a deeply moving account of his struggle with poverty, his lack of formal education, his flailing attempts at love, and most harrowing of all his slow death from multiple sclerosis.

Yet, for all its excruciating honesty, W.N.P. Barbellion has an extraordinary lust for life. As Zeppelins loomed above the streets of South Kensington, the humour and beauty he found in the world around him - in music, friendship, nature and love - deepens not just the tragedy of his own life, but the millions of lives lost during the First World War.