THE stories of Bishops Lydeard soldiers who fell during The Great War are being brought to light in a book.

Resident David Hinton, 70, has written War Time Parish & The Fallen, 1914-1918, the third book he has produced on the area.

Through his research for the book, which was two years in the making, and which took him to Somerset Heritage Centre, war diaries and the Imperial War Museum in London, he discovered three soldiers’ names not etched on the memorial.

He said: “All those names are read out each year. Some names you hear more than once, which implies that families lost more than one son.

“Two years ago my wife said, ‘to keep you out of mischief over the winter, how about trying to research and put some flesh to the bones of those soldiers, and find out what you can about them?’ “I found some fascinating and interesting facts about the families who did live here and their sons who died.

“And that’s the most satisfying thing – now they are people to me, and I hope by reading the book they will become people to the people of this parish, too. A lot of the names are, of course, still around today.”

The theme of the book launch on Friday (July 4) at 7.30pm is ‘wartime in our village’.

David will be in conversation with Great War enthusiast Darren Berry, who will be dressed as a soldier.