1914: Slender Novel, Big War
Although Jean Echenoz is both widely read and a winner of multiple literary prizes in France you’d have to …
Tag Archives: WW I
The Great Swindle: Opportunities in France, 1919
Pierre Lemaitre has won a substantial following both in his native France and abroad for writing crime fiction. His Commandant Camille …
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919
Nothing like good history, thoroughly researched and well written, helps better to put in place pieces of the immense human puzzle …
The African Queen: WW I Adventureland
Needing a break from my sometimes distressing immersion in WWI memoirs and history [here, here and here] I thought I’d …
The Crimson Field: Nursing at the Western Front
Happy to recommend a PBS/BBC mini-series that hasn’t got much attention: The Crimson Field Set in an imaginary field hospital …
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain’s Memoir of WW I
Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, recently brought to view by the movie of the same name, unaccountably escaped my decades long reading …
Vera Brittain: Not only the Movie, the Book
Military historian, Simon Jones, says Vera Brittain’s memoir, Testament of Youth, upon which the new movie is based, is one …
Testament of Youth — WW I Pacifist Comes to Film
Vera Brittain, one of the least lost of the Lost Generation of WW I, is on her third revival …
Boots to the Sun — An Italian Memoir of the “Great War”
Two indispensable companions are always with me on late-life trips across the seven continents. Leading the way is my excited-to-be-there, take-everything-in life …
The Water Diviner: In Galipolli Looking for Bones
Russell Crowe New Zealand/Australia’s perennial candidate for the movies’ most manly man, does a creditable job of re-visiting the trauma of …
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War
If you’ve never read anything about life in the trenches during World War One, Birdsong: A Novel of Love and …