Theodore Bayley Hardy VC DSO MC

The casual visitor to Carlisle Cathedral will notice massive sandstone walls, a magnificent ceiling, and the exquisite Flemish carving of the Brougham Triptych. Less obvious is a brass memorial tablet on the North Wall. It commemorates a man who would probably have preferred it not to be noticed. He was at one time a diffident schoolmaster at Bentham, near Lancaster, and an unassuming country vicar at Hutton Roof, near Kirkby Lonsdale. At the age of fifty-four, he was to become the most decorated non-combatant in the First World War: decorations won not in hot blood and anger, but in cool tenacious courage. He was to die only a few days before the Armistice. This book tells his story. In the modern world, where selfishness and greed dominate, it is a story of comradeship, unselfishness and an incredible heroism which should never be forgotten. Above all, it is the story of one man’s Christian witness which even the most skeptical agnostic or confirmed atheist must respect.