Just how many war memorials exist in Britain's cities, towns and villages can only be estimated. The National Inventory of War Memorials when they began their task some ten years ago putting forward a figure of possibly sixty thousand. This - thanks to the overwhelming response by volunteers around the country to the Inventory's request to gather and send in information - must surely by now have been reassessed in an upward direction.

Ray Westlake's latest book examines typical Gloucestershire and Herefordshire churches and war memorials, tracing the story of many of those remembered.