This book, first published in 1999, explores the experience of private loss and grief after the two world wars.

Part I. The First World War: 1. Theatres of grief, theatres of loss; 2. The sacrificial mother; 3. A father's loss; 4. The war widow and the cost of memory; 5. Returned limbless soldiers: identity through loss; Part II. The Second World War: 6. Absence as loss on the homefront and the battlefront; 7. Grieving mothers; 8. A war widow's mourning.