Shell Shock is the story of the mind at war. For centuries we have acknowledged the terrible physical effects of warfare, but it is only in the twentieth century, with the significant changes in the nature of war and our attitude towards it, that we have begun to realize the profound psychological effects of sending individuals to the front line.

Killing, watching friends die, leading others to their deaths – a soldier can only take so much of this horror without suffering the effects. This book provides personal testimony from soldiers and their families of the atrocities they have inflicted and had to endure and also documents the psychological illnesses they have suffered.

Shell Shock charts society’s attempts to distinguish between madness and cowardice, in conflicts from the First World War to Bosnia. It chronicles the birth of modern psychiatry and follows the progress of its military practitioners, torn between their duty to the army and to the individual soldier. Plotting the changing labels for an eternal condition – Shell Shock, battle fatigue, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – in a shifting moral landscape, it details the revolution in military attitudes to the fragility of men.

An authoritative and fascinating account of masculinity, madness and the ethics of war, this compelling book is the companion to a major Channel 4 series from Blakeway Productions.