Max Plowman Takes the Stand Against Killing; Cynthia Asquith Lowers the...
Today, a century back, Max Plowman was made to answer for his return to pacifism. A court martial, convened to decide his guilt on the charge of refusing to obey a direct order, allowed him a civilized...
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Heavenly Hills and Hellish Company for Siegfried Sassoon; Vera Brittain’s...
Yesterday, a century back, Cynthia Asquith blithely showed up at a village hospital to take the place of another volunteer nurse. Her task was to take temperatures, and she bungled it. Everyone had a...
View ArticlePhillip Maddison and the Dugout; Kate Luard Catches Up; Agony and Ecstasy for...
Once again memoir and fiction seem to be shadowing each other: a day after Siegfried Sassoon described the worst sort of stodgy gentleman officer–snobbish, coarsely sporting, and unforgivably windy to...
View ArticleRudyard Kipling on Relief and Depressing Medicos; Kate Luard on Hope,...
Yesterday Rudyard Kipling wrote of the barrier to the German advanced posed by the dead of the Guards division. But the remnants of the Second Irish Guards–reinforced by Australians–fight on. By the...
View ArticleKate Luard, as the Gas Shells Fall Again
Another single-barreled post for today, a century back, and thus an excellent time to recognize one of this project’s central writers. I first knew Kate Luard only as the anonymous “Nursing Sister,” a...
View ArticleHerbert Read Loses His Oliver; Siegfried Sassoon Closes a Book and Remembers...
A grim day, today, and a reminder that we rarely read the writings of those who suffer the most. Never the dead, and rarely the maimed. But our first victim is, as of yet, only missing. We’ve read...
View ArticleSiegfried Sassoon on Nightingales and Drunkards; Diana Manners on Madness and...
We’ll continue, today, with two of yesterday’s writers. Siegfried Sassoon is now on his way from the south of France to the north–back, that is, to the Western Front. May 10 11 p.m. …The other...
View ArticleEdward Brittain in Slippers and Socks; Siegfried Sassoon Notes Himself Noting...
First, today, a brief update on the far-flung Brittain clan. Edward, still in Italy, writes to Vera, not yet rescued from/abandoning her post in France. I receive alternately doleful and breathlessly...
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Duff Cooper Visits a Cathedral, and a Provokes a Very Long Excursus on...
The tomb of Louis de Brézé, Rouen Cathedral Duff Cooper is going sight-seeing in Rouen, with his beloved Diana beside him–in his imagination, at least. …I went almost with you to the churches we wanted...
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Charles Scott Moncrieff, Lover–and Wilfred Owen, Beloved; Siegfried Sassoon...
Charles Scott Moncrieff, 1913 Wilfred Owen headed back to Ripon today, a century back, something of a new man. There are plans to publish a book of his poetry, and he has not only lunched again among...
View ArticleIs Siegfried Sassoon a Good Chap, or Only Rather a Humbug? Cynthia Asquith...
Siegfried Sassoon has pledged himself to slowing down and simplifying: he will focus on his men, and think about nothing but the “groove” that an infantry subaltern finds himself in. This sounds rather...
View ArticleSiegfried Sassoon is Working Up to a Climax; Wilfred Owen is Working for the...
Apologies in advance for the long post: this is one of those days on which a whole host of our regulars provide a sharp insight or a significant update. Siegfried Sassoon, at least, takes it easy on...
View ArticleSiegfried Sassoon’s Reward; Vera Brittain Reverses Course
Siegfried Sassoon has been up and down of late, but he is essentially a man in limbo. He may write pastoral reveries or character studies of the men he commands or a prose ode to a new Canadian officer...
View ArticleDuff Cooper and Diana Manners Wish Upon a Star; Vera Brittain Queries...
Duff Cooper is a somewhat ingenuous diary-writer, and, in his poor-little-privileged-boy way, something of a naif, always being caught out by those treacherous foes champagne and pretty women and...
View ArticleSiegfried Sassoon Rotates Away from Bloodthirsty Brutes in Businesslike...
Only yesterday Siegfried Sassoon was settling in to his new trenches. But just as the military temperature began to rise–his first patrol in a year, a bombardment and a casualty, now a raid–he rotated...
View ArticleSiegfried Sassoon Hymns a Quebecois Captain; Ivor Gurney at Loose Ends;...
First, today, big news: Siegfried Sassoon is grumpy again. June 10 A dull, rainy morning. Among my letters I find the Southdown Hunt balance sheet… The hunt accounts always make me homesick . . . I am...
View ArticleJohn Ronald Tolkien Ill Once Again; Kate Luard on the Flu, the Bombers, and...
A temporary, summertime farewell to two contributors, today, both taken ill and not about to write more any time soon. But of John Ronald Tolkien and Kate Luard, it’s probably not hard to guess who is...
View ArticleKate Luard on Hopes and Hospitality; Wilfred Owen Prepares; Siegfried...
Before we get to our poets home in England, we have Kate Luard, our nurse in France, cheering on the advance: Saturday, August 10th, 10 p.m. There are wonderful things happening. By now we ought to be...
View ArticleThe Great Calm
At 5 A.M., the representatives of Germany signed the Armistice that had been under negotiation for four days. At 11:00, it took effect, and the war ended, almost exactly a week after Wilfred Owen was...
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