By the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed dead, lost forever beneath the battlefields. Countless families were consumed by a mission to discover what had happened to their loved ones, undertaking arduous, often hopeless journeys.

In this poignant talk, Robert Sackville-West tells the story of Britain’s century-long search to recover, identify and honour the missing soldiers of the First World War, from the department created to investigate soldiers’ fates to the modern-day use of DNA profiling.

Robert Sackville-West studied History at Oxford University and went on to work in publishing. He now chairs the company which – alongside the National Trust – runs Knole in Kent, which has been the Sackville family's home for the past 400 years. Robert is the author of the critically acclaimed Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles and The Disinherited.

The Searchers: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War