A former regional press journalist has focused on the watershed month when England joined the First World War for his third book.

Mark Rowe, left, carried out extensive research in regional newspapers published at the time for his book August 1914: England in Peace and War, which will be released next month.

It is his third book to be published after he had two books released in 2010, both of them which focused aspects of the Second World War, including one about the 1945 unofficial Ashes series.

Mark began his journalism career at the Wiltshire Times in Trowbridge in 1989 and went on to work for a number of regional newspapers, including Yorkshire Gazette and Herald, the News & Star in Carlisle, the Birmingham Mail, the News in Portsmouth, before becoming editor of Professional Security Magazine in 1999, where he remains.

Said Mark: “Naturally some newspapers had more interesting stories than others, but many papers captured the local flavour of what was after all the most exciting event of their times – a European war that Britain chose to be pulled into.

“Whether it was people milling around the posters declaring mobilisation of Territorials, crowds cheering the troops leaving their drill halls to go to war, or sudden shortages as the rich stocked up and emptied shop shelves, newspapers were the main source of news, and as some noted at the time, August 1914 was a profitable time to be in the news business.

“While the press did a poor job of telling readers what the 1914-18 war was like, the Battle of Mons of August 1914 was an exception, because in the chaos of the beginning of war, the British Army did not impose censorship on its soldiers well, or at all.

“Some men posted letters home that found their way into local papers within a couple of weeks. By their standards, that war news was extraordinarily quick.

“Also, when the first wounded came home to hospitals around the country, reporters were there to pick up stories. I doubt whether many historians have spotted that the regional press is an untapped source for the First World War.”

Mark’s latest book also tells the story of experienced war reporter E Ashmead Bartlett, who left London on 26 July 1914 when only Austria-Hungary looked like going to war with Serbia and he ended up travelling by train across Eastern Europe.

His previous books were Don’t Panic: Britain prepares for invasion 1940 and The Victory Tests: England v Australia 1945 and Mark now plans to write another cricket book.

The book will be released on 10 October and is available from Amazon.