Chronicle Of Youth: Vera Brittain's Great War Diary, 1913-1917: Great War Diary, 1913-17 (WOMEN IN HISTORY) - Tapa blanda

Vera Brittain¿s bestselling TESTAMENT OF YOUTH was based on her own copious diaries, which have a much greater intimacy than the account written for publication. These are those diaries. They begin in the carefree summer of 1913 with a blossoming romance and earnest discussions about the purpose of life and the nature of God ¿ but not about the onset of war, which takes them by surprise. The diary entries begin to darken rapidly. Her brother, her fiancé and most of their young men friends are killed in the war. Vera herself goes from knitting helmets and bandaging classes to abandoning her studies at Oxford to train as a nurse. She spent the remainder of the war nursing war-wounded men, among them German prisoners. Her diaries, written in London, Malta and France, contain moving descriptions of battle scenes and Zeppelin horrors over London.

Born in 1893, Vera Brittain won an exhibition to Somerville College, Oxford, in 1914, but a year later abandoned her studies to enlist as a VAD nurse. She served throughout the war, working in London, Malta and close to the Front in France. At the end of the war, with all of those closest to her dead, she returned to Oxford. Vera Brittain was a convinced pacifist, a prolific speaker, lecturer, journalist and writer, she devoted much of her energy to the causes of peace and feminism. She wrote 29 books in all, novels, poetry, biography and autobiography, but it was TESTAMENT OF YOUTH which established her reputation and made her one of the best-loved writers of her time. She died in 1970.