February 2012
14 posts
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Book post: Somme Mud
Somme Mud, a memoir by E. F. Lynch, written in the 1920s, and published in 2006. This book has been repeatedly called the Australian All Quiet on the Western Front, and has apparently started to be included on school reading lists to try and make callow young school children understand What Their Forefathers Went Through. This book is an absolutely startling testament to the psyche of the...
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TV post: Birdsong
Birdsong, the 2012 adaptation of the pretty silly 1993 book by Sebastian Faulks. I was no fan of the book. The miniseries took a relatively interventionist approach to adapting it, and therefore made it slightly better.
Cut for length; some mild spoilers.
One of my big issues with the book (there were several) was that it was centred on a romance which could have been called She’s Just Not...
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“If ever I had dreamed of my dead name
High in the heart of London, unsurpassed...”
– “Sonnet to my friend - with an identity disc” - Wilfred Owen
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January 2012
31 posts
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“When you have lost your all in a world’s upheaval,
Suffered and prayed,...”
– “Hospital Sanctuary” (1918), Vera Brittain. Written after she had returned to duty as a VAD following the death of her brother Edward.
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“I could not look on Death, which being known
Men led me to him, blindfold and...”
– “The Coward from Epitaphs”, Rudyard Kipling.
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“Here dead we lie
because we did not choose
to live and shame the land
from...”
– A. E. Houseman
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“Two months ago the skies were blue,
The fields were fresh and green,
And green...”
– “To Sylvia” EA Mackintosh (1917), who was killed about a month after he wrote it.
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Book post: Testament of Youth
Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain’s 1933 memoir of her youth, her time as a VAD, and her struggle to adapt to living on after the war when practically everyone she loved had died. I reviewed the miniseries of Testament of Youth some time ago, when I was lost in the wilderness and totally unable to put my hands on a copy of the book.
Cut for length, not spoilers.
Brittain attempted to...
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Film post: A Very Long Engagement
A Very Long Engagement, a 2004 film based on a 1991 book about a French girl named Mathilde, whose fiancé was declared MIA in WWI. The film opens with the last known movements of Manech, who, with four others has been convicted of self-mutilation to escape military service, and is to be sent “over the top” into No Man’s Land to find whatever death awaits him there. From early in the film...
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TV post: My Boy Jack
A 2007 telemovie based on a play, based on the true story of Rudyard Kipling’s family, particularly his son Jack, who fought in the first world war. Rudyard Kipling was a famous and well-established English poet by the outbreak of war, and along with various others, like Thomas Hardy, was involved in pro-war writing and poetry early in the war. His son Jack had very poor eyesight....
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Film post: Beneath Hill 60
Beneath Hill 60, a 2010 film based on the diary of Captain Oliver Woodward, commander of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company. This film is essentially formula WWI - the tunnelling aspect would provide a novel element, if Birdsong hadn’t done it first. That said, it isn’t a bad film: well-written, well-acted, and with less than the usual dose of maudlin ...
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“In a diary entry in June 1922 Sassoon admitted to a ‘vague sexual element’ in...”
– Santanu Das, on Sassoon and Robert Graves’ relationship. (via fuckyeahsassoon)
I have a book of Robert Graves’ letters, and even Graves admits that there was subtext.
(via lord-kitschener)
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TV post: ANZACs
ANZACs, a 1985 miniseries about a group of men who enlist in the 8th Battalion, AIF, in 1914 following them until 1919. Along the way, they are involved in the Gallipoli landing, the Somme offensive, particularly Pozieres, 3rd Ypres, and a bunch of other engagements.
This is a really excellent miniseries which has been praised for its historical accuracy, and which manages to cover off the...
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“The sunshine on the long white road
That ribboned down the hill,
The velvet...”
– “Hédauville”, Roland Leighton, November 1915, quoted in Vera Brittain’s “Testament of Youth”. (Leighton, Brittain’s fiancé, was killed in December of that year)
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Book post: Birdsong
A 1993 book by Sebastian Faulks, about Stephen Wraysford, an orphan cum clothmerchant cum homewrecker cum infantry officer perpetually stationed in the line alongside a tunnelling corps. Focuses primarily on the tunnelling corps and their activities, with the obligatory couple of trips ‘over the top’ for Wraysford.
Cut for length, not spoilers.
I was initially disposed to like...
December 2011
33 posts
“This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night. (via the-seed-of-europe)
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War through the generations - WWI rec'd reading →
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hepatosaurus:
Why do you lie with your legs...
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TV post: Testament of Youth
Testament of Youth a 1979 miniseries based on Vera Brittain’s 1933 memoir. Available on YouTube, starting here. Really excellent and very much worth watching. In lieu of being able to find this book ANYWHERE (I eventually found it in Blackwells, bless ’ em), and the miniseries being easily available online, I sat down to watch it.
It chronicles the experiences of the author at home,...
