In my own case I had purchased this book to aid my research for my grandfather who had transferred from the Leinster Regiment into the Prince of Wales South Lancashire Regiment where he received a commission. My expectation was that this book would provide assistance in locating his army record details and other matters relating to his position during the Great War. On a personal basis I was therefore disappointed with this book as a scant two pages are devoted to officers records, and no examples of the type of information that could be expected were given. However a revised and updated 2nd edition has since been published and the book now includes a case study for tracing an officer, a certain Lieut. Siegfried Sassoon.

That being said, if your research interests are for the period of the First World War, this particular book will be of value to you.

What it is offered is an introduction to the records maintained by the Public Record Office for the period 1914 to 1920. The book deals adequately with the types of sources available to the researcher at the PRO, and those outside the public record office that a researcher may find useful. There are two case studies provided as examples, one case study where no service records have been discovered and another case study using service records that were discovered within the PRO.

Many researchers with ancestors that served in the first world war, and for whom little material evidence is available, will find chapter Eight, Private William Henry Richards (the case study with no service records), particularly useful. In this example the author shares all his frustrations and disappointments with the various dead ends that he met, and the elation as small scraps of information were discovered that allowed him to put together an interesting account of his ancestors activities during the first world war.

The second case study Gunner Philip Pen (a case study with service records) likewise provides interesting information. These are both good examples of what you may expect to find from service records maintained at the PRO.

There is a small chapter on service records from other countries, and what the researcher may expect to find and to whom they should be applying for further information. In addition this book contains some useful Internet addresses for the researcher.

Finally the book does, in my opinion, work towards setting the right expectation for the documents from the First World War as approximately 25 to 30% of the documents have been lost over the years. In the introduction the authors stress that there is a one in three or one in four chance of finding a soldier's record in the information at the PRO.