Lives of the 'Leadswingers' (1915 -1919)

Tim Knebel is taking a look at a forgotten piece of Sheffield's war history at the Carpenter Room in Sheffield Central Library on Wednesday 11 November. He's an archivist at Sheffield City Archives, and the talk is about The Leadswinger, a trench magazine produced during the First World War.

If you've never come across it, The Leadswinger was a pioneering publication put together by a small group of young men serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps on the Western Front. They came from very different backgrounds but were held together by a shared love of art and literature. They wrote under pen names, and for a long time, their real identities were lost to history. Knebel's talk brings them back into the light.

Among the names he unmasks is a dashing doctor and Victoria Cross winner whose life after the war was blighted by drug addiction, and an eccentric violinist turned cartoonist who helped shape the career of one of Britain's best-loved illustrators today. It's a glimpse into the lives of Sheffield men who spent their war years writing and drawing in the middle of the Western Front, and what happened to them once they came home.

The session is organised by Libraries Sheffield as part of the city's Local History collection. It runs from 6pm to 7pm at the Carpenter Room, Sheffield Central Library, on Surrey Street in the city centre, and entry is free.