author
Harold Reginald Peat
1893–1960
A Canadian-born writer and decorated First World War veteran, he turned his wartime experience into vivid memoir and propaganda writing that reached a wide early-20th-century audience. His best-known book, Private Peat, helped shape how many readers understood trench warfare and recovery.
1 Audiobook
Private Peat
by Harold Reginald Peat
About the author
Born in Toronto on January 20, 1893, Harold Reginald Peat grew up in Canada and later became known as a soldier, lecturer, and author. During the First World War he served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, was wounded in action, and was awarded the Military Medal for bravery.
Peat is best remembered for Private Peat, a wartime memoir first published in 1917. He followed it with other books and public speaking, often drawing directly on his experience at the front and during recovery. His writing is closely tied to the atmosphere of the war years, when personal testimony from soldiers carried unusual force with readers.
He died on March 22, 1960. Although he is not as widely read now as some other war memoirists, his work remains part of the record of how the First World War was described to English-speaking readers in its own time.