TOM ISITT
Author, historian, adventurer

Me, my books, and assorted non-specific things

The Idea

The Italian Front is a neglected part of WW1 history, and was so extraordinary that it deserves far more attention. Tom Isitt's grandfather fought there with the British 48th Division, so Tom set out to travel the length of the Front in his grandfather's footsteps and write about the extraordinary events that happened there.

The Trips

Tom's travels have taken him to the Italian Front more than a dozen times, during which time he has cycled and hiked more than 1,200 miles, and ascended (under his own steam) more than 210,000ft. He has been caving hundreds of feet beneath the Kras in Slovenia, and climbed to 11,300ft on the Ortler, in an attempt to experience something of what those men went through 100 years ago.

 The Book

To be published by Helion & Co on November 15, 2025, Thunder in The Mountains is a fresh look at WW1 on the Italian Front, meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated. From the malarial marshes of the Adriatic to the ice-capped peaks of the Alps, men fought each other, and the weather, in the most extreme environments imaginable. This was WW1 as never seen before, but it played a key role in Allied victory and cost one million men their lives.

THUNDER IN THE MOUNTAINS

  • It's history.
  • It’s travel.
  • It’s remembrance.
  • It’s adventure.
  • It’s triumph (and failure) in the face of seemingly impossible adversity.
  • It’s ordinary people doing extraordinary things in incredible places.
  • It’s military history presented in an entirely new way.


It’s Thunder in The Mountains, by Tom Isitt, published by Helion & Co on November 15th, 2025.


336 pages, full colour throughout

140,000 words

149 photos (61 archive, 88 modern)

26 colour maps

 

Plus...

 

QR codes in each chapter link to free additional content — more photos, more maps, videos, animated battle maps, and 27 downloadable battlefield walks.


Part history, part travelogue, part battlefield guide, Thunder in The Mountains takes a fresh look at WW1 on the Italian Front in a meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated new book. For so long neglected by British historians, the Italian Front was WW1 fought at the limits of human endurance, from the malarial marshes of the Adriatic to ice-clad peaks of the Ortler Alps. A common misconception is that the Italian Front was an irrelevant side-show, but Thunder in The Mountains shows that it played an essential part in the Allied victory, at a cost of one million lives.

 

Tom Isitt has spent the last six years exploring the Italian Front of WW1 on foot, by bicycle, and even on horseback, giving him a unique insight into the extraordinary battles that took place amongst the peaks and valleys of the Alpine front.

 

He walked in the footsteps of his Grandfather, who served with the British 48th Division in Italy, and tells the story of WW1 fought in very different circumstances to the wet plains of the Western Front, or the icy steppes of the Eastern Front. Here military advances were often measured in vertical metres, attack tunnels were dug through solid ice at 11,000 ft above sea level, the tops of mountains were blown off with huge mines, and thousands of soldiers perished in avalanches.

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