Those letters, stripped of all personal references, are now published in a collection of his writings on the war, All That Was Left of Them, by the Orage Press (£20). The book, compiled and edited by my brother Benedict, has an excellent introduction by my nephew, James Read, who has carefully investigated his grandfather's career as a soldier. It includes all of HR's writings on the war and his war poetry. In the letters and prose writings we follow his progress from a shy subaltern with a Yorkshire accent among snobbish Etonians, castigated by his colonel for bringing a radical journal, New Age, into the mess, to the confident commander of his battalion facing annihilation during the great retreat. In "The Raid" he describes in fictional form his foray from the trenches at the head of a platoon, faces blackened with burnt cork, to seize a German soldier and so identify the opposing forces — a feat which won him the Military Cross; and "In Retreat" the longer and more protracted engagement. "We were rushed up to the line in the early hours of the morning," he wrote to Evelyn:

And from then and for six days and nights we were fighting as I never dreamt I would fight — without sleep — often without food and all the time besieged by hordes of the Boche. The Colonel was wounded during the second day and I had to take command of the battalion. We were surrounded in our original position and had to fight our way through. We took up position after position, always to be surrounded. On the whole the men were splendid and there were many fine cases of heroism. But our casualties were very heavy and we who have come through may thank our lucky stars eternally.

For this he was awarded the DSO, "a medal", wrote Hugh Cecil writing of Read in The Flower of Battle, "not often given to junior officers in that war, unless they had just missed a V.C. He was also promoted to Captain." The intensity of HR's experiences in the Great War brought out paradoxical aspects of his personality. He described it as "an adventure" but emerged a pacifist; he prized the extraordinary camaraderie developed under fire, yet clearly relished being in command. The Yorkshire accent, disdained by the smug Etonians, brought him closer to his men, and social distinctions proved irrelevant to the qualities of character that emerged under fire.

What was the source of his courage? In "The Raid" Read analyses the cowardice of an officer P. whose terror "might bitch the show and bring disgrace to us all. He had a mother and a sweetheart . . . He never got free from his home thoughts; he was still bound in some sort of dependence to these ties. His mind was not free to lead its own existence . . . I think that is why he was a coward." Did Read's own courage come from his own lack of family ties, or innate detachment, or the influence of Nietzsche, whose work he was immersed in at the time?