For lovers of Pat Barker's Regeneration and Michael Morpurgo's War Horse, the reissue of a stunning WWI novel on the author's 80th birthday

Alec and Jerry shouldn't have been friends- Alec's life was one of privilege, while Jerry's was one of toil. But this hardly mattered to two young men whose shared love of horses brought them together and whose whole lives lay ahead of them.

When war breaks out in 1914, both Jerry and Alec sign up - yet for quite different reasons. On the fields of Flanders they find themselves standing together, but once again divided- as officer and enlisted man.

And it is there, surrounded by mud and chaos and death, that one of them makes a fateful decision whose consequences will test their friendship and loyalty to breaking point.