HE was a poet, philosopher, professor and a prisoner of war. She was his loving wife and the mother of his children at home in wartime Scotland.

All they had to keep in touch were letters that spoke of love, longing, worry and war. Now, 100 years exactly since the day they began to be written, Glasgow University yesterday published the first extract from seven months of correspondence between Professor Archibald Allan Bowman and his wife Mabel.

Petros Aronis, a history of art student from Athens, has curated the Bowman social media project on Instagram called Letters from A Prisoner of War 1918. The first letter was published on social media yesterday and they are being released in instalments to show how it must have felt to anxiously wait for news of a loved one.

The letters were written between April 1918 and November 1918 and will be published in the order they were written. During the war, with censorship in place on both sides, the couple would not have received the letters in order and in some cases there would have been a lag of a few weeks.

The university holds the full collection of documents from Professor Bowman, its chair of moral philosophy from 1926 to 1936, which give a rare insight into the professional and personal life of the remarkable man.

AA Bowman was born in Beith, Ayrshire. He married Mabel Stewart in 1912. They had met when she enrolled as a student in a class he was teaching at Glasgow.

The couple had three children, who studied at the University of Glasgow like their parents: Archibald (known as Ian), Mary (known as Maisie) and Alastair Bowman, who was killed while serving with RAF Coastal Command in the Second World war.

AA Bowman studied at Glasgow between 1901 and 1905. Following graduation, he was appointed assistant to the professor of logic at Glasgow and lecturer in logic at Queen Margaret College.

In 1912 the family moved to Princeton University, where Bowman was the chair of logic. However, when the First World War broke out, he was granted leave of absence to join the British Army.

He joined the Highland Light Infantry in 1915 and was sent to France. Bowman was taken prisoner at the Battle of Lys in April 1918 while serving as a lieutenant, and was held prisoner until November 1918.

While a prisoner of war he wrote Sonnets from a Prison Camp – remarkably, the commandant of the camp where he was held helped Bowman to get them published.

Following repatriation, Bowman returned to Princeton in September 1919. After the war Bowman felt very strongly about the League of Nations, and wrote many talks which he delivered to a variety of clubs and societies, to further the League’s cause.

In 1926 he was appointed to the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow, a position the professor was to retain until his death on June 12 1936, aged 53.

Written in both English and German, the letters paint a picture of life for the officers in captivity, although many sections of the correspondence are blacked out by censors.

Bowman speaks of his isolation from the outside world with no access to newspapers and how he was keeping himself busy by running classes to teach his fellow prisoners of war German.

Mabel’s letters give a fascinating insight into the day-to-day life of herself and their children in wartime Scotland and how difficult it was to access the vital provisions her husband needed.

Their love for each other shines through. He wrote to her: “You are absolutely the life on which I live, my light of joy, for you, Mabel, I could live thro’ anything.”

Mabel wrote to him: “We have had 11 years of life... we have, haven’t we my beloved? But [I] will be glad to share even more. I am so sorry for those who have had just a short fleeting married life snatched between periods of service. I think I’m sorriest though, for those young lads who have fallen just as they were heading into manhood.”

Bowman tells her about the sudden change of prison camp from Rastatt to Osnabruck in Westphalia. He also provides a brief description of the new prison camp.

“I was suddenly ordered off without a moment’s warning, had just time to shove my belongings into my pockets and go. The camp here is a small one and is situated on a very lovely and melancholy plain.”

Some of the scheduled items zoom in to highlight the texture of the paper, show how they were censored and in some cases how they were damaged in their journey.

Aronis said: “There are beautiful and touching sentiments expressed in the letters. It also shows the vital role those on the home front had in providing prisoners of war with food, provisions and parcels to keep them fed and clothed in the camps.

“In this project, as well as putting them into chronological order, I have also tried to highlight how the letters were impacted by the war. For some of AA Bowman’s letters the censors used black ink on top of the writing and in Mabel’s case the censor cut out parts of her letters. It has been a wonderful experience retelling this internment story and using today’s digital media to do it.”

Professor Tony Pollard, professor of conflict history and archaeology, said: “As a conflict historian, this is a remarkable insight into wartime Britain. They transport us back in time to see what ordinary people had to deal with both at home and on the front line during the First World War.

“This student research project also helps to bring a new understanding to the documents, showcasing the letters as historical objects which tell their own special story of war censorship.

“I am delighted to see these letters being published on social media to give a modern day context to this superb archive.”