Roland Leighton has Weighty News; We Meet the Duchess of Sutherland
Heather Cliff, Lowestoft, 21 August 1914 [Roland to Vera] I am feeling very chagrined and disappointed at present. I expect Edward has told you that I have been trying for a temporary commission in...
View ArticleThe Eve of Battle
John Lucy and the 2/Royal Irish Rifles had, by today, a century back, marched as far as a village only a few miles south of Mons, Belgium. The German army was believed (correctly) to be only a few...
View ArticleBattle: John Lucy is in the Thick of It, the Grenfell Twins are Confused, and...
Today, a century back, being the British Army’s first day of real combat,[1] we should have a brief word about military history, specifically that breed of military history known as the “Battle Piece.”...
View ArticleThe Duchess of Sutherland is in German Hands; Vera Bandages Badly in Buxton;...
In German-occupied Namur, the Duchess of Sutherland negotiates her status. The Padre came in at last and said that the flames would not reach us. In the afternoon we ventured into the smoky street. It...
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Elsie Knocker Speaks, but Sarah Macnaughtan Testifies; the Modernists Open...
The first reviews of war poetry are in! Today’s Egoist, a new and soon-to-be influential modernist journal, published a review of the first major war anthology, Poems of the Great War. This had been...
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Julian Grenfell Goes for a Jaunt with Lady Feidling, but Praises the Duchess...
Julian Grenfell, still very much the frustrated and idle cavalryman–“I wish I were a footslogger” is a frequent refrain– wrote another strangely debonair letter home today, a century back. Darling...
View ArticleRaymond Asquith Attempts an Epic; An Update on Kate Luard’s Flyboy; Bim...
Bim Tennant, lately the recipient of a great deal of leave, is back with his battalion, and wishing he had had more leave, and left here a little further, as it were. 28th February, 1916 Darling Moth’,...
View ArticleAlf Pollard and Frank Richards Hold On at Arras; Patrick Shaw Stewart Idle in...
After a day of stiffly resisted attacks along the Hindenburg Tunnel, the Royal Welch are left holding an improvised line, in the face of likely counter-attacks. Frank Richards reminds us of every...
View ArticleEddie Marsh in the Weeds of G.H.Q.; Vera Brittain Amidst the German Ward–and...
We will spend the day, today, with two non-combatants in France. First, we rejoin the brief but lively diary of Eddie Marsh, patron of the poets and secretary to Winston Churchill. Marsh, despite his...
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