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Muirhead Bone was a well-established draughtsman and etcher when he became the first official war artist in July 1916. This was intended as a one-off appointment to provide further illustrations of the Battle of the Somme for publications like the War Pictorial.

Robert Graves was so badly wounded during the Battle of the Somme that his family was told he was dead. In his autobiography, Goodbye to All That, he wrote one of the most enduring memoirs of the First World War and the Somme in particular. 

The Battle of the Somme (1 July - 18 November 1916) was a joint operation between British and French forces intended to achieve a decisive victory over the Germans on the Western Front after 18 months of trench deadlock.

Tens of thousands of soldiers went 'over the top' at 7.30am on 1 July 1916 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Nearly 20,000 British soldiers died that day, which looms large in the collective national memory of the First World War. Cameramen Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell were there to record footage that became the cinematic sensation, Battle of the Somme.

The Battle of the Somme (1 July - 18 November 1916) was one of the most bitterly contested and costly battles of the First World War, lasting nearly five months. The offensive began on 1 July 1916 after a week-long artillery bombardment of the German lines.

The first day of the Battle of the Somme has a prominent place in British history and popular memory and has come to represent the loss and apparent futility of the First World War. But what actually happened on 1 July 1916?

The Battle of the Somme saw the first major action of Britain's New Army – the volunteers who had responded to Lord Kitchener's 1914 call for recruits. It was also the first Western Front offensive in which the British Army would take the leading role, rather than acting in support of its French ally. 

Stefan Westmann, a German medical officer, endured the long British artillery bombardment that began the Battle of the Somme. Stefan Westmann was from Berlin. In 1914, he was a medical student at Freiburg University.

Major Lanoe Hawker VC helped to establish British control of the air above the Somme in the opening weeks of the battle, but was shot down and killed shortly after it ended.

Robert Stewart Smylie, a 42-year-old father of three, died on the Somme with photographs of his wife and children in his shrapnel-damaged wallet. By the summer of 1914, Robert Smylie had been the headmaster of Sudbury Grammar School for three and a half years. Despite his age and family responsibilities, he joined the Army when the First World War broke out. 

Percy George Boswell was 22 years old when he went over the top in the first hour of the Battle of the Somme. Percy Boswell was born in Lambeth, London in 1894. He joined the Army in September 1914 soon after the First World War broke out, serving first as a private in the 5th Battalion, London Regiment. 

British-born Oswald Samuel Blows served on the Somme with the Australian Imperial Force, taking part in their toughest battle at Pozières. Oswald Blows left England in the autumn of 1910 and settled in Western Australia. He learned about the outbreak of war while he was in the Australian bush. On 19 October 1914, he enlisted in the 10th Australian Light Horse, but left the Army a month later.