Joseph, 1917

The book tells a true but unusual story. It’s about a man who got caught up in the First World War, but it isn’t just a soldier’s tale. It’s also about the man’s family and home and about what happened to him when he left them behind. And it’s about the things the war made even great men do.


Joseph didn’t want to go to war and he fought only because a military tribunal forced him to. That tribunal sat in London, many miles from Joseph’s home, and its decision was so outrageous that his own local tribunal went on strike. The book is partly about that strike and what caused it, and it draws on fascinating legal records and vibrant newspaper reports of the time. It also raises an interesting question – if you put a man in harm’s way then realise you made a mistake, shouldn’t you at least try to make amends?


Joseph, 1917 is also about what happened to a man and a community in a terrible time. It looks at those who sat in judgement of Joseph and it talks about the Marquess of Salisbury, about Lord Derby and his ill-fated recruitment campaign and about a brutal army camp in northern France. But there’s just as much about the old mill that was tricked out for the Old Queen’s Jubilee, the government inspector with a strange taste in food, the golfer who had shared a stage with Lillie Langtry and now had an awful lot to say and the little lass who lies in a coffin of glass. And the story ends with a sad and maddening twist.


David Hewitt is a lawyer and a writer. Like Lord Salisbury, he has chaired many judicial tribunals, and as Joseph did, he lives within sight of the great white windmill at Four Lane Ends.

David Hewitt is a lawyer and writer and, like some of the people in Joseph, 1917, he sits on judicial tribunals. He was born and brought up in the place in which the book is set and he is interested in the law and what it does to people. He is also interested in lost stories, especially those that shed fresh light on great events, and he enjoys bringing those stories back into the light.