Monuments to Courage



Monuments to Courage: Victoria Cross Monuments and Headstones is a two-volume book by David Harvey on the last resting places of 1,322 of the 1,350 recipients of the Victoria Cross. The 896 page book has over 5,000 illustrations and a large index enabling one to cross reference with ease. There is no ISBN. The book also features an introduction by HRH Princess Alexandra and a foreword by Australian VC recipient Sir Roden Cutler.

Each of the entries gives the date of birth, date of action and brief details of the VC action, and date of death and place of burial or cremation where applicable. Where possible, photographs of the individual, his grave and any memorial were included. Excluding the recent Iraq war recipient (Johnson Beharry), 28 VC recipients were still alive at the time the book went to press and several have since died.

The research for this massive work took Harvey 36 years of travelling to 48 countries in his search for unknown graves. His interest in the topic was awakened in the early 1960s when he assisted William Lummis into his researches into VC recipients.

Harvey died in 2004, aged 57, following the long-term effects of an accident that confined him to a wheelchair. He received notable obituaries in The Daily Telegraph and The Independent.