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,...
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“And have we done with War at last?
Well, we’ve been lucky devils both,...”
– “Two Fusiliers” Robert Graves, 1917
(The other Fusilier is Siegfried Sassoon. As an aside, Robert Graves is probably my second favourite war poet after the inevitable Wilfred Owen)
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“When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale...”
– “When you see millions of the mouthless dead” Charles Hamilton Sorley, 1915
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“Tell them at home, there’s nothing here to hide:
We took our orders,...”
– “Epitaph: Neuve Chapelle” H. W. Garrod (1915)
Digging Up Fallen Diggers is the Ultimate... →
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“Because of you we will be glad and gay,
Remembering you, we will be brave and...”
– “Julien Grenfell”, Maurice Baring
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Useful: Gutenberging WWI
No doubt everyone has heard of Project Gutenberg, a huge collection of free ebooks with expired copyright. Alongside Shakespeare and Austen, Gutenberg has an excellent collection of books about World War One (thoughtfully organised into a bookshelf, no less).
This collection includes diaries/memoirs and fiction, and was all written fairly close to the event (since otherwise the copyright...
Letters from the frontline (a feature about "All... →
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Book post: My dear I wanted to tell you
My dear I wanted to tell you a 2011 novel by Lousia Young about young up-and-coming officer Riley Purefoy, the girl he loves, his CO, the girl he loves, and his cousin, whom nobody loves.
Having been spoiled by primary (or at least roughly contemporary) sources so far, I was a bit suspicious of this book when I first started reading it. I also picked it up for a third of the cover price at a...
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TV post: Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey, a 2010 and 2011 TV series, the second season of which covers the First World War.
Matthew Crawley, a captain in the BEF, William Mason, a private, and Thomas Barrow, a stretcher bearer, all spend varying amounts of time in the trenches. I have a great deal of fondness for this show (somewhat battered by Season 2…), but in my view it handled the war pretty badly.
...
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Movie post: Passchendaele
Passchendaele: a 2008 Canadian war film written, directed and starred in by Paul Gross, inspired by(I won’t say based on) the experiences of his grandfather.
Spoilers ahoy.
Obviously I was missing a key piece of information when I watched this film, because I thought that this was biographical; ie, I thought dreamy leading man (DLM) Michael Dunne was basically Paul Gross’s...
On a scale of 1 to Gavrilo Princip, how much drama...
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Book post: All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front by 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque. Generally considered the best WWI book ever written.
What really works about this book is the details. A lot of the context is missing, and it instead operates in postcards, showing the lack of control of the private soldier over what he was doing on any one day, the change in what mattered to them, and the hopelessness...
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Book/Movie post: Maurice
Maurice (book) and Maurice (film), a 1987 film based on the EM Forster novel written around 1913 but not published until 1971. Largely set when it was written; ie, directly before WWI. EM Forster was a conscientious objector during the war.This book was apparently well known of in the right circles throughout its life (passed person to person in dark alleys, wrapped in brown paper, etc), but...
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Movie post: Legends of the Fall
Legends of the Fall: a 1994 epic about dreamy long-haired young Brad Pitt and his generally beloved younger brother and his generally loathed elder brother and how they go to WWI and fall in love with the same woman, because she’s a babe.
This movie went on and on and on. It was definitely epic, but epic in that way where it just tried to condense like fifty years into two hours...
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Book post: Good-bye To All That
Good-bye to all that by Robert Graves, a 1929 autobiography of Graves, who was an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers in WWI.
This was a very matter-of-fact and calm autobiography of Graves’s early years, up until 1929. The early parts, when he is at school, are interesting in terms of the public school culture of the day, and for how much Graves writes as if the petty high school...
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Film post: Regeneration
Regeneration (aka Behind the Lines in the US), a 1997 film based on the Pat Barker novel of the same name.
I’ve already recorded my thoughts on the book. I can’t say it lent itself to being a good movie, but the screenwriters/director made some good decisions in trying to turn it into a good movie. It was well cast, with Jonathan Pryce playing WHR Rivers, James Wilby playing...
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“A girl’s voice in the night troubled my heart.
Across the roar of the guns, the...”
– “Going Over (The Somme, 1917)”, Charles G D Roberts
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Book post: Regeneration
Regeneration by Pat Barker, a 1994 novel about the inhabitants of Craiglockhart Psychiatric Hospital in Edinburgh. Historical figures appearing as characters include WHR Rivers, noted psychiatrist; Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, unhinged war poets; and Robert Graves, another unhinged war poet, but one who managed to avoid diagnosis. Then there’s Billy Prior who is totally made up...