In 1915 a young Englishman was repatriated from the Western front to Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital in Scotland. Traumatised and disillusioned, he would write the best-known anthem of his doomed generation. Wilfred Owen's horror was replicated across the war zones of the twentieth century. Shell shock, epitomising the catastrophic new relationship between man and machine, is Philipp Blom's uni ... (read more)