Epitaphs of The Great War: Passchendaele

Limited by the Imperial War Graves Commission to sixty-six characters - far more restrictive than Twitter’s 140-character rule- these inscriptions are masterpieces of compact emotion. But, as Sarah Wearne says, their enforced brevity means that many inscriptions rely on the reader being able to pick up on the references and allusions, or recognise the quotations - and many twenty-first-century readers don’t. Consequently she has selected one hundred inscriptions from the battlefield cemeterie…