May 2012
2 posts
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Book/Movie post: War Horse
War Horse, a 1982 children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo and a 2011 film adaptation of the book, directed by Stephen Spielberg. If I had only read the book or seen the film, I think my review of either would have been glowing, but having seen the film, reading the book somehow made me enjoy both less.
The story centres around Joey, a part-thoroughbred horse owned by a boy named Albert. The novel is...
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I've started measuring the futility of a given...
April 2012
14 posts
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“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives… You are now lying...”
– This inscription appears on the Kemal Atatürk Memorial, ANZAC Parade, Canberra.
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ANZAC Day 2012
ANZAC stood, and still stands, for reckless valor in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat.
Charles Bean, official Australian historian of WWI.
In honour of ANZAC Day, have a collection of recs for films and books that are about or by Australians in WWI.
Film
Gallipoli (1981), the definitive film about Australians at...
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“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary...”
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“He stood alone in some queer sunless place
Where Armageddon ends. Perhaps he...”
– “Enemies”, Siegfried Sassoon. Another poem probably written about the death of David Thomas.
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“Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,
I know that David’s with me...”
– “Not Dead”, Robert Graves. About David Cuthbert Thomas, a great friend of Graves and Sassoon, who was killed in 1916, aged 20. Graves also wrote a poem called “Goliath and David” about Thomas’ death, while Sassoon wrote several poems about him. Both men also...
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Reblog if you love to write.
Whether it be fanfiction, original stories, drabbles, songs, poems, books, or anything that has to do with creative words, then reblog. Let’s gather all the writers of Tumblr together.
March 2012
14 posts
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Book post: Leviathan
Leviathan, a 2009 YA novel by Scott Westerfield, which recasts World War I as a conflict between “Darwinists”, who use genetically-engineered animals, and “Clankers”, who rely on giant mecha. Enjoyable enough as a YAFfy steampunk adventure, but the historical detail is very disappointing.
Cut for length, not spoilers.
[[MORE]]The story revolves around Deryn, a cross-dressing midshipman known as...
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Follow Friday: First World War edition.
lord-kitschener:
If you happen to share my interest in studying the topic, I would heartily recommend following these excellent blogs:
the-seed-of-europe
onegreatwar —Has great analyses of WWI in books, film, and pop culture. Precisely the sort of thing that I would be doing more of if I weren’t terribly busy and/or lazy.
1914to1919
instalgewittern
Schützengraben
...
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Book post: The Winter of the World
The Winter of the World, a 2007 anthology of World War I poetry, edited by Dominic Hibberd and John Onions. When I bought this, I’d been toying with buying a WWI poetry anthology for a while, and this was just a flat-out cover-purchase, because I was tossing up between this and the Penguin Book of WWI Poetry, and this one just looked nicer.
I have also posted some of my favourite poems out of...
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“By the end of the [first] day both sides had seen, in a sad scrawl of broken...”
– Edmund Blunden
In response to being asked who had won The Battle of the Somme, WWI
(via jangobeezy)
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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 That...
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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.