Ashworth, Tony, Trench Warfare 1914–1918: The Live and Let Live System. Macmillan: London, 1980: a magnificent description of the tacit understandings between the two sides in ‘quiet’ sectors, where there was less aggression than might be imagined.
Barton, Peter, and Doyle, Peter, Beneath Flanders Fields. Spellmount: 2004: a very detailed guide to the evolution of underground warfare and architecture on the Western Front.
Bull, Stephen, World War I trench warfare. 2 parts, Osprey: Oxford, 2002: an excellent coverage, including many details of weapons and trench furniture &c.
Chasseaud, Peter, Topography of Armageddon. Mapbooks: London, 1991: facsimile trench maps mainly in 1:10,000 of the British sector, but also parts of Verdun &c.
Coombs, Rose E. B., Before endeavours fade, a guide to the battlefields of World War I. After the Battle: London, 1976, new edn. 1990: an essential text. Includes many photos of surviving pillboxes and trenches as well as a comprehensive coverage of monuments.
Ellis, John, Eye Deep in Hell, the Western front 1914–18. London, 1975: a harrowing evocation of life in the trenches.
General Staff, War Office, British trench warfare 1917–18, a reference manual. Imperial War Museum edn.: London, 1997: reprints of two key engineering manuals from the time.
General Staff, War Office, Manual of field works (all arms). HMSO: London, 1925; reprinted by Government of India central publications branch, Calcutta, 1926: a much more detailed version of the above, based on analysis of the whole 1914–18 experience.
Holstein, Christina, Verdun: Fort Douaumont. Leo Cooper: Barnsley, S.Yorks, 2002: an impressively full modern account.
Griffith, Paddy, Battle Tactics of the Western Front, the British army’s art of attack 1916–18. Yale: London, 1994: my attempt to describe what it says on the tin.
Harris, Paul, Amiens to the Armistice. Brassey: London 1998: excellent analysis of Haig’s victorious final advance, in ‘semi-mobile warfare’.
Horne, Alistair, The Price of Glory: Verdun, 1916. Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1964: an inspiring and comprehensive, if slightly journalistic, account of the Verdun epic.
Jünger, Ernst, The Storm of Steel. R H Mottram, ed.: London, 1929: memoirs of a leader of German assault troops.
Oldham, Peter, Pill boxes on the Western Front: a guide to the design, construction and use of concrete pill boxes 1914–18. Leo Cooper: Barnsley, 1995: a magnifcent and complete coverage of the subject, profusely illustrated.
Ortholan, Henri, Le General Seré de Rivières, le Vauban de la Revanche. Bernard Giovanangeli: Paris 2003
Razac, Olivier, Barbed Wire, a history. Tr. Jonathan Knight, Profile books: 2002
Rocolle, Colonel-Doctor, 2000 ans de fortification française. 2 vols, Lavauzelle: Paris, 1973: contains a very detailed section on the Serré de Rivières forts and their successors. Apparently a more specialist book is Benoit’s Les fortifications permanentes pendant la guerre (Paris, 1921) and see also Clarke, On Fortification (London, 1910).
Siepmann, Harry, Echo of the guns: Recollections of an artillery officer 1914–18. Hale: London, 1987: insights into how materials for fortification were ‘found’.
Solano, E. John, Field entrenchments, spadework for riflemen. British General Staff manual, 1914
Wynne, G. C., If Germany Attacks. London, 1940; Greenwood reprint for US Army, 1976: analysis of changing German defence concepts, by a British official historian.