Alex Churchill is a historian, battlefield guide and presenter of TV documentaries. She is also a Trustee of the Great War Group.

She spoke about her new book - Ring of Fire - A New Global History of the Outbreak of the First World War - at the Petersfield Bookshop on 10 July. 

The book gives a different perspective, not the manoeuvrings in the corridors of power, but from street level; just ordinary people, including children and the older people who worked the fields after the labour force - young people and animals -  was mobilised for the war.

There was a ‘spirit of 1914’ but lots of other feelings too  - like worry, anxiety, fear. And they were common; if you stripped the nationality of the witnesses you wouldn’t know whose army they were in. She also features the impact of the dislocation in Chile, Argentina and what’s now Indonesia.

She spoke to Mike Waddington at the Petersfield Bookshop, a location she loves.

More at Alexandra Churchill | Historian 

Ring of Fire: A new global history of the outbreak of the First World War, by Alex Churchill and Nicolai Eberholst , published by Bloomsbury at £30.