Stanley Spencer's Great War Diary 1915-1918 provides an insider's view of some of the most important events of the war, describing first-hand what it was like to experience the battle of the Somme, Montaubon and Vimy Ridge.

Wounded on three occasions, Spencer was awarded the military cross in 1918 for his role in a successful trench raid.

Born in Sheffield in 1890, Charles William Stanley Spencer joined the Sheffield Union Bank branch of the London City and Midland Bank before enlisting with the Royal Fusiliers as a private in 1915, later to be commissioned and serve with the West Yorkshire regiment.

After the war he returned home, got married and in 1926 a son, John Anthony, was born.

"Shortly after that my father retired to bed and became an invalid for the rest of his life," explains Tony Spencer. "He had TB of both kidneys."

He filled the long hours by assembling scraps of papers he had collected from the war and writing them up.

"Soldiers in wartime are not allowed to keep diaries but I think he had notes of dates and things and had kept some field notebooks that he had from working on an observation post," continues .

"When my mother was dying she gave me a bundle about an inch thick with pages of closely-written paragraphs.

" I put it to one side because it looked so formidable and it was only when I was convalescing after an operation I started to read it. It was a great read and I thought the rest of the family should have access to it. I divided it up into sections and got it typed.

"The typist would put in punctuation and I would have to take it out again. I wanted it in my father's words. Later my daughter-in-law (Karen Wilks) got it made into a book for the family, six bound copies.

And there it might have rested but my daughter-in-law is a graphic designer and had a contract with the Imperial War Museum and asked someone there if they thought people might be interested in it.

The upshot was Pen and Sword offered to publish it to tie in with the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme."

Tony Spencer lived his first few years in Sheffield.

"Both my parents were from the city. He met my mother, Molly Breakey, after the war. It was a tennis club romance, they were part of the Fulwood set it seems.

"I was born at Endcliffe Rise but we all moved down to Bournemouth when he became ill. It was thought the pine trees and sea air would be better for him."

Living with an inactive father could not have been easy, but Spencer insists: "I felt in no way neglected and didn't think my life was different from anyone else.

"I was sent away to school and in the holidays I would sometimes stay with relatives. I would be sent up to Sheffield with a label round my neck. I had the time of my life.

"I had two great aunts who lived on Whitham Road and in the summer they would rent a cottage in Baslow and I would run around playing cowboys and Indians.

It was great."

George Spencer died in 1943, by which time his son had joined the RAF – slightly to his father's disapproval.

"It's understandable because his view of the RAF was based on the Royal Flying Corps where the life expectancy was about three weeks," says Tony Spencer.

After a comparatively uneventful war, Tony Spencer graduated from Oxford University and worked for the Forestry Commission, ultimately returning to his home county to live in York with his three teenage sons.

In 1986 he retired to Kilburn in North Yorkshire and at the age of 70 bought a 30-acre wood in the village and still works it.

The book has brought him closer to his father. "I hardly knew him before and I did learn a lot about him from his book. I feel it's some reward for my father's efforts and I am delighted it's paying back a debt to him.

"I want my father, who suffered rather a lot, to finally to have the justice of the family knowing what he had been through and sharing it with a wider readership."

Stanley Spencer's Great War Diary 1915-1918, edited by Tony Spencer, is published by Pen & Sword at £19.99.

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