Vera
Brittain was born on 29 December 1893 to a family
where the father thought that girls, if they were
to be educated, should be second to boys. Thus while
her brother Edward went to Uppingham she was sent
off to a boarding school where her aunt was vice-principal.
However
she was made of stern stuff and eventually won a scholarship
to Oxford, but following the outbreak of war in 1914
she enrolled as a VAD.
Her
personal losses in the war were punishing - her fiance
Roland Leighton and her younger brother were killed
as well as two other close friends.She wrote about
her war experiences, including nursing the wounded
from the Battle of the Somme, in Verses of a VAD
and after her return to Oxford she wrote The Lament
of the Demobilised in which she spoke bitterly
about four wasted years, though her most familiar
work is probably Testament of Youth
We
tell in our book of her other work and of her friendships
and give in full her poem The Last Post.
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A
sketch of Vera Brittain done by the talented
artist Charlotte Zeepvat. Charlotte has sketched
portraits of all of the poets in the book -
25 in all - making this a most unique collection
of images of the poets of the First World War. |
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