When Harry Patch died in his Somerset nursing home last year at the age of 111, the last surviving link to the trenches of World War I was lost. Harry fought at the Battle of Passchendales and was seriously injured in the groin by a shell which killed the three other men on his gun team.

Harry did not talk about the war until he reached his 100th birthday, after which time he was much in demand for interviews and television programmes.

His funeral at Wells Cathedral was broadcast live on television and radio and people queued overnight to secure tickets.

The Last Fighting Tommy is a result of a series of interviews with Harry by military historian Richard Van Emden. It is both ordinary and extraordinary, a moving testament to a man who although a pacifist came to represent a generation of soldiers.

Harry came from a bygone age, living in rural Somerset in the days before any of the things we now take for granted. He was conscripted into the Army to fight in a war he knew little about, and returned to his village of Combe Down near Bath without many of his childhood friends.

His memories of the trenches were still vivid when he spoke to Van Emden, who weaves in what exactly was going on at the Somme as Harry and his friends were on the frontline.

For Bristol readers, Harry’s recollections of helping to build the Wills Memorial Building will provide much interest. The Gothic revival building and its famous tower at the top of Park Street was completed in 1925 and officially opened by King George V and Queen Mary, and was one of the last buidlings in the UK to be constructed using wooden scaffolding.