November 11, 2009 – 6:32 pm
In 2002, Ben Shephard wrote A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914 -1994. This is a work of serious history, examining a wide range of sources and attempting to get beyond conventional ideas about war neuroses. He looks at these in their historical context, in a way that illuminates the behaviour both of soldiers [...]
August 27, 2009 – 4:47 pm
Two literary newsletters have arrived in the post. Each contains some of my writing, but that’s not the main reason for looking at them.
The Arnold Bennett Society newsletter is full of interesting bits and pieces, but the main reason for looking it out should be a piece called ‘There’s no such place as Wrikton’ by [...]
Douglas Jerrold is a writer who interests me greatly. I’m increasingly convinced that he is definitely the author of A Few Things you can do with One Arm, though I’ve no clinching evidence yet.
I’ve taken a look at his 1927 history of the Royal Naval Division, and it’s an odd mixture of styles. Parts of [...]
I’ve recently been re-reading Morton’s Barber of Putney and Frankau’s Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant. Both were published in 1919, and in both the Germans are sometimes referred to slangily as “Gerboys”.
I don’t think I’ve seen this term outside these two novels, and I wonder how common it was. I suppose it’s a way infantilizing the [...]
Vincent Sherry, in his annoying book The Great War and the Language of Modernism, characterises the War as a Liberal one (and he doesn’t like Liberals). He sees Britain’s engagement as motivated by self-interest, and then justified by a liberal rhetoric, a discourse of apparent “lucidity and rationality”, a “language of logical optimism”. This [...]
There is a website that automatically rates blogs (and other websites too, I think) to see who they are suitable for.
It tells me that this site is rated PG – parental guidance suggested.
I think that this is done by a simple vocabulary check, which noses out any language that is crude or disgusting. Apparently the [...]
I’m half-way through (and thoroughly enjoying) Warwick Deeping’s Suvla John (1924). It’s about a soldier, supposed killed at Gallipoli, who comes back secretly after several years, dressed as a tramp, to discover his younger brother in charge of the family estate and his fiancée married to a cad.
The cad’s father [...]
Does anything date more appallingly than good intentions?
In Richard Blaker’s Medal Without Bar (1930) the first time we hear of a soldier called Fishstein is when he is leaving:
For the other man, “Ikey” Fishstein, the battery’s Jew, there was nothing in particular that could be done. Richards had dabbed iodine on a dozen or [...]
February 22, 2007 – 7:54 am
Today’s Daily Telegraph has extracts from a recently discovered Army notebook, containing a diary of the first four days of the Battle of the Somme (though the strapline seems to think that this took place in 1917…)
It describes some grim horrors, but with a turn of phrase that speaks volumes about the attitudes of the [...]
February 11, 2007 – 12:17 pm
I’m very fond of this letter from Bennett to Richard Blaker in 1925:
My ignorance on the subject which you mention is complete. It is a perfect sphere, and you can walk round it and not find a flaw anywhere. Otherwise I would have been delighted to be of assistance.
Goodness knows what the subject was.
