Portsmouth in the Great War is a story with a cast of thousands. They included a future archbishop and at least six brave and determined young clergymen with a talent for writing letters who volunteered as Army chaplains. There was the first naval VC of the war who was also the first submariner VC ever; a glamorous commander-in-chief, a number of dashing naval and marine officers and men - and a host of unofficial diarists and letter-writers. The wife of a Royal Academician also featured who went backwards and forwards across the Channel with hospital supplies on the Red Cross yacht Medusa until German U-boats put paid to her plans. Also in the story was the Portsmouth school girl, daughter of a local GP and Territorial Army officer, who was in Germany when war broke out and made her own, perilous way home. There were dockyard workers, and women who took their places when they went away to fight, and women who replaced men on the trams, in banks and post offices, and of course there were the men who joined the three local battalions of the Hampshire Regiment, and the ships which belonged to the Port of Portsmouth. They all took part in the greatest war the world had ever seen, and thousands of them laid down their lives in defence of this country and it's Empire - in Flanders, at Coronel, at Gallipoli and at Jutland, and in the many other theatres of war.

The book is fully illustrated and many of the images have not been published before.