A fascinating insight into the lost world of Oxford in the 1930s moving on to first hand accounts of wartime experiences of serving soldiers and officers, this volume is a treasury of day to day life.

The letters are supplemented by hundreds of images - many kept meticulously by Aidan White.

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In 1935, a young and enthusiastic Aidan White learned that he had been accepted for admission to New College. Self-deprecating and humble, the years that followed are related in his own unique voice and those of his dearest friends and family in this wonderful collection of treasured letters.

This is the story of one man among many who was to have his hopes and dreams dashed by war, but who undertook everything that was expected with a keen sense of duty and calm fortitude. His often amusing observations are a window into a lost world; a stickler for ‘doing things properly’, his exasperation as the world changes around him is both touching and insightful. He was, as his friend Bob Plant described him, a ‘Gentleman of the Old School’.

Reading this book of innermost thoughts, one is somehow left with the feeling of having made a new friend.

From the introduction by Dr Timothy Hands:

Once upon a time there was a fashion for what was known as Great Man History. It gave little attention to the ordinary and the everyday but concentrated on the extraordinary and the exceptional. This fascinating volume, thank goodness, is the reverse, a labour of love which documents a man of great ability and great character, who inhabited unusual times, but refused to have his head turned by their excesses.