Noonday

The final instalment of Barker’s war trilogy draws on actual experiences of the second world war, as completing the story of Elinor Brooke, Paul Tarrant and Kit Neville, begun with 'Life Class' and continued with 'Toby's Room', 'Noonday' is both a stand-alone novel and the climax of a trilogy. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London

and deals with the impact of battle on men in the trenches in the 1914-1918 conflict, their shattered nervous systems no less than their bodies, and the work of the psychiatrists patching them up and sending them back to the Front.

(Photograph:Twitter)