Books by Vera Brittain
Vera Brittain (1893-1970) was a novelist and nurse, best known for her searing memoir of World War I, Testament of Youth (also turned into a movie in 2014).
“I have read all three of her memoirs and this one is by far the best. She gave validity to what it was like to be a woman in the First World War. That was a very important thing that she did at the time — because this book came out in 1933. Poets and others had written about what it was like to be a man in the trenches and I think there was a feeling, ‘Well, women weren’t in the trenches, so how dare women talk about what it was like?’ Nothing could rival the pain that men suffered. But what she showed is that women suffered their own pain, which was a different sort of pain. What she really puts across is the agony of just waiting, waiting, waiting, and the incredible sense of helplessness that women had.” Read more...
Dorothy Byrne, Journalist
Interviews where books by Vera Brittain were recommended
Five Memoirs by Women, recommended by Dorothy Byrne
We have much to learn from the lives of women who came before us, says Dorothy Byrne, the British TV journalist and producer who is now president of a women’s college at the University of Cambridge. She recommends five of her favourite memoirs, all by women and notable for their searing truthfulness about everyday life.
The best books on Legacies of World War One, recommended by Wade Davis
The explorer and author of Into the Silence, Wade Davis, tells us that the consequences of the Great War were much more than merely political. He says the war had a noticeable impact on exploration, arts and literature, and modernity itself.
