1) It is self-evident that as humans we respond to colour instinctively, and in deep, primal ways. It stirs our hearts as well as our heads. Colorisation at its best is an emotional enhancing agent: it magnifies empathy and horror, pity and disgust. 
2) It challenges us to respond to history not simply as accountants and analysts, but as human beings, capable of the same fear, confusion, passion, ambition, anger and love as those whose images we see. It asks us to ask more.
It nudges us to go off and hunt for the truth.
It nudges us to go off and hunt for the truth.
3) That is its purpose. That is its power.
Assembling 200 photographs that do justice to the history of the First and Second World Wars was a hard and sometimes harrowing process. The selection you'll see here is only that – a selection.
Assembling 200 photographs that do justice to the history of the First and Second World Wars was a hard and sometimes harrowing process. The selection you'll see here is only that – a selection.
4) We hope it tells a story that honours the times it narrates, but present it knowing that it can only ever be partial.... But we hope that this book will inspire new readers to the topic to delve deeper into the history, and encourage older heads...
5) ... to reconsider what they think they know.
In the two years we spent working on this book, we passed the centenary of the end of the First World War, and the eightieth anniversary of the start of the Second World War.
In the two years we spent working on this book, we passed the centenary of the end of the First World War, and the eightieth anniversary of the start of the Second World War.
6) We heard all-too often of the deaths of veterans of the latter conflict: now a sadly dwindling group. Some time in the next decade or so, the last of the wartime generation will be lost to the world, and their deeds and experiences will become solely the preserve of history.
7) We offer this book in part as a tribute to those men and women – some of them heroes, some of them victims, and others just ordinary people who lived their lives through terrifying times.
8) We also offer this book as a warning.
As we write, fascism, nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, hatred, bigotry, racism and the politics of exclusion and divison are on the march once more all over the world.
As we write, fascism, nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, hatred, bigotry, racism and the politics of exclusion and divison are on the march once more all over the world.
9) Let what you see here be a reminder of where this leads.
The world is fragile. It takes less than we think to set it aflame.
- Marina & Dan
The world is fragile. It takes less than we think to set it aflame.
- Marina & Dan
