Vera Brittain – the new film

The BBC is clearly getting ready for the big anniversary of 2014. As well as Tom Stoppard’s adaptaion of Ford Madox Ford’s  Parade’s End, which I’m greatly looking forward to, they have now announced a new film of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth. I remember vividly the seventies TV adaptation of this book – so [...]

Paul Fussell, 1924-2012

2nd Lieut. Paul Fussell. I was saddened to hear of the death last week of Paul Fussell. He is a critic whom I have often argued against, in these blog posts and elesewhere, but he was an important writer and an invigorating one. I would argue that he got many things wrong in The Great [...]

Oh What a Lovely Programme

I’ll be moving house next week, so have been doing the final stages of an attic clear-out. Today I found something I never realised I’d kept, the programme of Oh What a Lovely War from Wyndhams Theatre, where I first saw it in 1963. It reminded me of  a thrilling evening, and the first time, [...]

P. G. Wodehouse on Maud Allan’s ‘Salome’

A major scandal of 1918 was the Pemberton-Billing libel case. In February 1918 Maud Allan, an expressive and sensuous dancer, presented her version of Wilde’s ‘Salome’ to a select audience. Noel Pemberton-Billing fumed about her in his paper, The Imperialist, suggesting that she was a lesbian, and that her audience was packed with the sexual [...]

‘The Conquering Hero’ at Richmond

Allan Monkouse’s The Conquering Hero is one of the most interesting plays of the twenties, and the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond have given it a production of their usual high standard. Allan Monkhouse (1858-1936) was himself too old for military service in the war, but here, as in his 1919 novel True Love, he [...]

100 years of the RFC

The Royal Flying Corps was founded in 1912. On the BBC website there’s an interesting anniversary article about its origins, and how it developed during the War.

Vera Brittain, fact and fiction

Reading Vera Brittain’s Testament of Experience (1957) makes me think once again about the complicated relationship between truth and fiction when it comes to writing of the Great War. Many novels contain strongly autobiographical elements, while many memoirs are structured like fiction. Readers and critics add to the confusion. Several novels, such as Sassoon’s Sherston [...]

‘All Quiet’ – the cocktail

In P.G. Wodehouse’s Mulliner Nights, Oofy Prosser is in a bad state the morning after enjoying Bronx cocktails, Martinis, Side-cars, Lizard’s Breaths, All Quiet on the Western Fronts [...] champagne, whisky, brandy, chartreuse, benedictine and curaçao. Was there really an All Quiet cocktail? Googling doesn’t find me a recipe. Was this a joke, based on [...]

The Daily Mail again

Another snippet from A War Museum – once again a reader’s letter to the Daily Mail: SIR – I am staying in an east coast town that has suffered more than its share from Teutonic Kultur as dropped from the skies. Yet I have seen a large estabishment still labelled ‘Kindergarten’. This surely ought to [...]

War! What’s it good for?

You look for one thing, and you find another. I wanted to look at a 1932 Douglas Goldring pamphlet about pacifism. This turned out to be fiery, but a bit predictable. It was bound, though with other pamphlets in the ‘Here and Now’ series published by Wishart, and the one following it was a joy. [...]