"R.F. Delderfield is a born storyteller." ― Sunday Mirror To Serve Them All My Days is the moving saga of David Powlett-Jones, who returns from World War I injured and shell-shocked. He is hired to teach history at Bamfylde School, where he rejects the formal curriculum and teaches the causes and consequences of the Great War. Eventually David earns the respect of his students and many of his fellow teachers, against the backdrop of a country struggling to redefine itself. As David falls in love and finds himself on track to possibly take on the headmaster role, he must search to find the strength to hold true to his beliefs as the specter of another great war looms. To Serve Them All My Days is a brilliant picture of England between the World Wars, as the country comes to terms with the horrors of the Great War and the new forces reshaping the British government and society. Subject of a Landmark BBC Miniseries Includes Bonus Reading Group Guide WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: "Mr. Delderfield's manner is easy, modest, heartwarming."― Evening Standard "He built an imposing artistic social history that promises to join those of his great forebears in the long, noble line of the English novel. His narratives belong in a tradition that goes back to John Galsworthy and Arnold Bennett."― Life Magazine "Sheer, wonderful storytelling."― Chicago Tribune "Highly recommended. Combines tension with a splendid sense of atmosphere and vivid characterisation. An excellent read." ― Sunday Express "A beautifully-written, emotionally charged and complex tale of one man's life, tragedies, hope and healing, set at an English boarding school. Absolutely engrossing." ― Bookfoolery and Babble "[L]ush and descriptive... " ― Books Like Breathing "Delderfield's love of the boys and the teachers is contagious and provides a touching tribute to this time in British history." ― We Be Reading "Delderfield takes his time in telling his story... filled with details." ― Book Are My Only Friends "A rich and complex story... the author brings the story full circle in a charming way." ― The Tome Traveller’s Weblog "I can't thank Sourcebooks enough for reprinting the R.F. Delderfield novels. All of them are wonderful reads, engrossing and comforting at the same time." ― Booksie’s Blog "Fascinating... a book to savor. " ― Library Queue "Reading To Serve Them All My Days is an experience, not merely an activity and it is one of those books that give you a story you will not soon forget, that will give you characters that you will know, inside out, and you will crave to meet one more time." ― Reading Extravaganza Born in 1912., R. F. Delderfield was a journalist, playwright and novelist, renowned for brilliantly portraying slices of English life. He is one of England's beloved novelists, with many of his novels being adapted into television and film, including the landmark BBC miniseries of To Serve Them All My Days. Excerpt from Chapter One The guard at Exeter warned him he would have to change at Dulverton to pick up the westbound train to Bamfylde Bridge Halt, the nearest railhead to the school, but did not add that the wait between trains was an hour. It was one of those trivial circumstances that played a part in the healing process of the years ahead, for the interval on that deserted platform, set down in a rural wilderness, and buttressed by heavily timbered hills where spring lay in ambush, gave Powlett-Jones an opportunity to focus his thoughts in a way he had been unable to do for months, since the moment he had emerged from the dugout and paused, rubbing sleep from his eyes, to glance left and right down the trench. From that moment, down long vistas of tortured, fearful and horribly confused dreams, his thoughts, if they could be recognised as thoughts, had been random pieces of a child's jigsaw, no two dovetailing, no half-handful forming a coherent pattern. Yet now, for a reason he could not divine, they coalesced and he was aware, on this account alone, of a hint of reprieve. *** The shell, a coal-box, must have pitched directly on the parados of the nearest traverse, filling the air with screaming metal and raising a huge, spouting column of liquid mud. He had no real awareness of being flung backwards down the slippery steps, only a blessed certainty that this was it. Finish. Kaput. The end of three years of half-life, beginning that grey, October dawn in 1914, when his draft had moved up through a maze of shallow ditches to a waterlogged sector held by the hard-pressed Warwickshires they were relieving. Even then, after no more than two days in France, his sense of geography had been obliterated by desolation, by acres and acres of debris scattered by the sway of two battle-locked armies across the reeking mudflats of Picardy. There were no landmarks and not as many guidelines as later, when trench warfare became more sophisticated. The confusion, however, enlarged its grip on his mind as months and years w