Stephen Graham’s A Private in the Guards (1919) is one of the very best memoirs by a man who served in the ranks. It also puts forward a tough philosophy of warfare.His book’s first sentence is: ‘The sterner the discipline the better the soldier, the better the army.’
Although he was, as a private, on [...]
February 1, 2009 – 1:45 pm
This was a one-day conference organised in conjunction with the excellent War and Medicine exhibition at the Wellcome Collection. A number of speakers explored different aspects of the themes of memory and war, in ways that connected fascinatingly.
To start with, Martin Conway from Leeds gave a laid-back presentation about memory in general. He talked [...]
January 29, 2009 – 9:26 am
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned this exhibition as one probably worth seeing, and yesterday finally got myself along to the Wellcome Collection near Euston, which I had never visited before. Yes, tt is well worth visiting.
I was most interested in the WW1 stuff, of course, and there is plenty of it. More or [...]
January 12, 2009 – 10:59 am
The website of the Wellcome Institute, on the Euston Road, gives fascinating details of its exhibition, War and Medicine.
This covers the development of military medicine from the Crimean War to the present day. The website suggests that there is plenty of WW1 material, including sections on facial reconstruction, and on “shell-shock”.
There will be [...]
November 5, 2008 – 9:26 am
Today’s Telegraph reprints a 1968 essay by Vera Brittain reflecting on war and gender. Here’s an extract:
During the periods of waiting, especially when the newspapers reported the imminence of a “great push”, ordinary household sounds became a torment. The striking of a clock, marking off each hour of dread, broke into the immobility of tension [...]
September 4, 2008 – 6:07 pm
There’s a review in today’s Times Literary Supplement of a new book about ECT (or electroconvulsive therapy) as a treatment for mental illnesses such as psychosis or depression.
It traces the history of the therapy from the experiments of Ugo Cerletti in Rome in the 1930s, through the widespread use of it in the 40s and [...]
My interest in Susan Miles having been aroused, I ordered two books of her poems from the depths of the Bodleian – Annotations of 1922 and The Hares and other poems of 1924. Some of the pages of The Hares were still uncut, which indicates how much academic interest this rather good writer has been [...]
January 31, 2008 – 8:34 am
Q: Why are the standard misleading clichés about WW1 so very popular with writers?
A: Because they are so very useful for adding instant pathos to a story or script.
Last night I watched “To the Last Man”, an episode of Torchwood, the Dr Who spin-off that is never quite as good as the original. The [...]
September 5, 2007 – 4:55 pm
Here are some images and references relevant to my paper at the Canterbury Kipling conference on Friday:
1.
August 19, 2007 – 1:09 pm
I wonder what else there is hiding in Kipling’s story “In the Interests of the Brethren”.
This is the one whose narrator forms a chance friendship with Lewis Burges, propritor of a tobacconists’ shop, and through him is introduced to the Masonic Lodge Faith and Works No. 5837 E.C. This Lodge has become an open [...]
