Ronald Gorell Barnes, Third Baron Gorell, was a pre-war journalist and junior infantry officer until wounded on the Somme. After recuperation and staff training, he worked at GHQ France from where, in June 1918, he was sent to London to co-ordinate what the army called ‘educational training’. Promoted suddenly from captain to full colonel, he then presided over a vast education effort during the army’s demobilisation. Having decided the army needed a new type of educator, he was instrumental in establishing the Army Educational Corps in June 1920. This volume integrates Gorell’s diary with a variety of contemporaneous documents to explore that corps’ origins.

Dr Jim Beach is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth Century History at the University of Northampton. He served as an army education officer from 2001 to 2006.