And he will share the emotive tales he has garnered from diaries, articles, letters and interviews during a talk at Warwick library on May 15.

Mr MacArthur’s CV is impressive and pioneering: former associate editor of The Times and deputy editor of the Sunday Times, he also founded Today and the Times Education Supplement.

But despite demanding jobs he has found time to write numerous historical books including The Penguin Book of 20th Century Speeches– all of which he describes as his “hobby”.

His latest book follows the chronology of war: men leaving loved ones behind, experiences on the front and back home and the resulting disillusion and loss.

His interest in the First World War was spawned by the fact his mother’s three brothers died before the age of 21 in battle.

And the experiences captured by the likes of Wilfred Owen and Sebastian Faulks had always lingered “in the background” of his mind.

Writing the book was a labour of love and one that revealed little known facts about war-time relationships.

He said: “I did a lot of work in the Imperial War Museum which has hundreds of articles, diaries, letters and songs and oral interviews.

“You could spend years there reading them, but I was there for around 60 days.

“I was looking for people who weren’t familiar. There are all sorts of poets and diaries that people have heard of so I was trying to find some of the others that people hadn’t heard of before.

“I also read lots and lots and lots of books and the whole time was looking for excerpts that would make the anthology.

“I put it together chronologically through the years and I think it captures the progress of the war through the voices of the soldiers that fought it.”

Mr MacArthur focuses on the Western Front and the accounts of soldiers fighting there.

He said: “I found letters written by soldiers before they went over the top, which were very moving and I hadn’t realised the extent of camaraderie between the German and English soldiers.

“They would often let each other into ‘no man’s land’ to get their dead and toss over cans beer to each other.

”I also discovered how much the officers respected their men, the soldiers, who until that time were almost another species.”

The book took MacArthur three years to complete and he says he did it with a “journalist’s eye”, looking for something which “moved” him.

Although he is hailed as a historian MacArthur says he “always wanted to be a journalist” and that he has “never had a boring job”.

But the link between journalism and history is not such an alien one according to MacArthur who believes “journalism is the first draft of history”.