Publishers, Readers and the Great War: Literature and Memory since 1918 9781474291491, 9781474291514, 9781474291477

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Publishing the First World War, 1919–930
2. ‘The Bloodless War’: Reception and Controversy during the Interwar Years
3. Marketing Myth: Richard Aldington, Vera Brittain and the Memory of the First World War
4. The War to End All Wars? Literature and Memory, 1939–1949
5. Republishing the First World War: The Impact of the 1960s
6. Remembering War, Resisting Myth: Literature, Memory and the Last Veterans
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Publishers, Readers and the Great War

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Publishers, Readers and the Great War Literature and Memory since 1918 Vincent Trott

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 Paperback edition published 2019 Copyright © Vincent Trott, 2017 Vincent Trott has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover image: The British Red Cross on the Western Front, 1914– 1918 © Imperial War Museums (Q 11021) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Names: Trott, Vincent, author. Title: Publishers, readers and the great war : literatureand memory since 1918 / VincentTrott. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, animprint of BloomsburyPublishing Plc, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017011842| ISBN 9781474291491(hardcover) | ISBN 9781474291507(epub) | ISBN 9781474291477 (epdf) Subjects: LCSH: English literature–20th century–Historyand criticism. | World War,1914-1918–Great Britain–Literature and the war. | Publishers andpublishing–Great Britain–History–20th century. | Literature publishing–Great Britain–History–20th century. | Books and reading–GreatBritain–History–20th century. | World War, 1914-1918–GreatBritain–Public opinion–History. | Collective memory and literature–Great Britain–History–20th century. | World War, 1914-1918–GreatBritain–Historiography. Classification: LCC PR478.W65 T76 2017 | DDC820.9/358–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011842 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-9149-1 PB: 978-1-4742-9148-4 ePDF: 978-1-4742-9147-7 eBook: 978-1-4742-9150-7 Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Figures Acknowledgements Introduction

vi vii 1

1

Publishing the First World War, 1919–1930

13

2

‘The Bloodless War’: Reception and Controversy during the Interwar Years

51

Marketing Myth: Richard Aldington, Vera Brittain and the Memory of the First World War

85

3

4

The War to End All Wars? Literature and Memory, 1939–1949

119

5

Republishing the First World War: The Impact of the 1960s

147

6

Remembering War, Resisting Myth: Literature, Memory and the Last Veterans

175

Conclusion

199

Notes Bibliography Index

207 247 265

vi

Figures 1.1

Dust jacket design for the first edition of Gilbert Frankau’s Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant (Hutchinson, 1920) 1.2 Dust jacket design for the first edition of Ernest Raymond’s Tell England (Cassell, 1922). Courtesy of the Orion Publishing Group 1.3 Dust jacket design for the first edition of A. S. M. Hutchinson’s If Winter Comes (Hodder and Stoughton, 1922) 1.4 Dust jacket design for the first edition of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (Putnam, 1929) 1.5 Dust jacket design for the second edition of All Quiet on the Western Front (Putnam, 1929) 1.6 Dust jacket design for the first edition of Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire (J. M. Dent, 1917). Courtesy of the Orion Publishing Group 1.7 Romney Towndrow’s dust jacket design for Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire/Light (J. M. Dent, 1929). Courtesy of the Orion Publishing Group 1.8 Front cover design for the first edition of Frederic Manning’s Her Privates We (Peter Davies, 1929) 1.9 Len Lye’s design for the front of the dust jacket for the first edition of Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That (Jonathan Cape, 1929). Courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation and the Govett Brewster Art Gallery 1.10 Len Lye’s design for the back of the dust jacket for the first edition of Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That (Jonathan Cape, 1929). Courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation and the Govett Brewster Art Gallery 1.11 Dust jacket design for Charles MacArthur’s War Bugs (Hutchinson, 1929) 3.1 Paul Nash’s dust jacket design for the first edition of Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero (Chatto & Windus, 1929) 3.2 Chatto & Windus advert for Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero in the Publisher and Bookseller, 27 September 1929 3.3 Victor Gollancz advert for Testament of Youth in The Observer, 27 August 1933

23 25 26 33 34 37

38 39

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43 44 92 96 110

Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the support and guidance offered by various colleagues and mentors. I am especially grateful to Annika Mombauer, Sara Haslam and Jamie Andrews for reading numerous drafts and offering attentive feedback during the early stages of this project. I am also grateful to Shafquat Towheed, Jay Winter and Jane Potter, all of whom have offered insightful comments on complete drafts of this work, at various stages during my writing and research. I have endeavoured to incorporate many of their suggestions in this book, but it goes without saying, of course, that any mistakes that remain are my own. I first became interested in researching the memory of the First World War as an MA student and I would therefore like to thank Dan Todman, whose teaching on the subject inspired me to undertake further research in this field. Numerous other individuals have shared ideas and advice with me, including many of the staff and research students at the Open University, in addition to the organizers and participants of the conferences that I have attended. All of these individuals deserve my thanks. I am also grateful to the staff at Bloomsbury who have helped bring this book to fruition. I have used a large number of archives and libraries in my research and I would therefore like to thank the staff at all of these institutions for their assistance. The British Library in particular has provided a base for much of my research, and I am particularly grateful to the staff there. I must also extend my deepest thanks to Alan Hewer for providing me with numerous scans of dust jackets from his impressive collection of First World War books. I would like to acknowledge all of the organizations and individuals who have granted me permission to quote from unpublished sources, and to those who have permitted me to reproduce various images. I would like to thank the Orion Publishing Group for permission to reproduce the dust jackets for Under Fire (1917), Tell England (1922) and Under Fire/Light (1929). I am grateful to the Len Lye Foundation and the Govett Brewster Art Gallery for permitting me to reproduce the dust jacket of Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That (1929). Copyright Siegfried Sassoon by kind permission of the Estate of George Sassoon. Excerpts from Richard Aldington’s letters to Charles Prentice of 11 May 1929,

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Acknowledgements

28 June 1929, 4 August 1929, 22 and 25 September 1929, and 30 March 1930 by kind permission of the Richard Aldington Estate, c/o Rosica Colin Limited, London. Thanks are due to the Random House Group Ltd. for permission to reproduce Chatto & Windus material held at the Random House Group Archives at the University of Reading. Quotations from Vera Brittain are included by permission of Mark Bostridge and Timothy Brittain-Catlin, literary executors for the Estate of Vera Brittain 1970. Quotations from the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex are reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf of the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive. All quotations from exam papers are reproduced by kind permission of the Cambridge Assessment Group Archives. Parts of Chapter 6 have been adapted from my article ‘Remembering War, Resisting Myth: Veteran Autobiographies and the Great War in the Twenty-First Century’, Journal of War & Culture Studies 6/4 (2013), 328–342, available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1179/1752628013Y.0000000003. Parts of my discussion of Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero in Chapter 3 can be found in my article ‘ “The Market Is Getting Flooded with Them”:  Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero and the War Books Boom’, in Nicola Wilson (ed.), The Book World:  Selling and Distributing British Literature, 1900–1940 (Leiden:  Brill, 2016). My thanks for permission to reproduce this material here. I am of course greatly indebted to all of my friends and family for their love and encouragement. Olivia Howick, in particular, has supported me during the latter stages of this project. I would also like to thank my mother, Cherry Trott, for her continued, unwavering support for my academic career. Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to the memory of my father, Andrew Trott, who did not live to see me embark on my academic career.

Introduction

One of my first scholarly encounters with the First World War came at the age of eleven, during my final year of primary school, when I studied Isaac Rosenberg’s poem, ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ (1916). The poem taught me, among other things, the meaning of the word ‘sardonic’, but it was also one of my first introductions to the potent imagery of the First World War. Although Britons are, perhaps, more likely to remember studying Wilfred Owen than Rosenberg, I am not at all unique in that I first remember encountering the Great War through its literature. Indeed, the First World War, more than any other, was a ‘literary war’. This was not just because it inspired the production of an enormous quantity of literature, but also because literature has played a significant role in determining how the conflict was subsequently understood, remembered and mythologized. This book demonstrates how and why literature has come to occupy such a prominent position in the collective memory of the First World War. Through an examination of the history of publishing and reading trends, it explores the various means through which literature has shaped understandings of the First World War in Britain since 1918. The memory of the First World War has itself become a battleground, a site of contestation and conflict. Since the 1990s, military historians in particular have reacted against what they perceive as an inaccurate emphasis on horror and futility, railing against a ‘mythology’ of the Great War. This mythology, succinctly summarized by a number of scholars, hinges on a distinct narrative: that of initial patriotic enthusiasm giving way to disillusionment and despair amidst the chaos and degradation of trench warfare.1 In the words of the literary critic Samuel Hynes, the myth characterizes the war as a ‘radical discontinuity’ that shattered an idyllic pre-war age and ushered in the immense political and cultural shifts of the twentieth century.2 The

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Publishers, Readers and the Great War

soldiers, according to this mythology, were ‘lions led by donkeys’  – brave, innocent men sent over the top by incompetent generals in pointless battles, two of which, the Somme and Passchendaele, retain a particular resonance in Britain.3 The notion that the war was ultimately a meaningless, futile endeavour that wiped out an entire generation is a crucial but contentious facet of this mythology. This mythology, in the eyes of many historians, exerts a powerful influence over contemporary British perceptions of the First World War. Gary Sheffield, for example, suggests that it has been deeply ‘driven into the national psyche’,4 while Brian Bond lamented in 2002 that ‘the gulf between serious historical studies and popular misconceptions, encouraged by the media, may even be widening’.5 In many accounts, literature, above all other cultural media, is deemed to be responsible for the emergence and transmission of these myths. Richard Holmes asserts that the conflict ‘usually enters our minds not as history, but as literature’,6 while in a recent study of the war’s legacy, David Reynolds has argued that ‘1914–18 has become a literary war, detached from its moorings in historical events’.7 Literature is indelibly linked to the mythology for two reasons: the war poets and writers not only played an important role in transmitting this narrative, but have also become a central part of it, revered for revealing the ‘truth’ about the war’s horror. But if popular perceptions are inaccurate, how should we remember the war? Historians have stressed, first and foremost, that the First World War was a necessary, meaningful endeavour for Britain. They argue that failing to intervene in the conflict would have permitted the imperialist German domination of Europe, and consequently severely threatened British security.8 The generals, we are told, were not incompetent, callous ‘donkeys’ but often skilled professionals who deserve some credit for Britain’s ultimate victory.9 Despite the dangers of trench warfare, historians have also sought to transcend the paradigms of horror, death and squalor that colour representations of the First World War. We are reminded that many soldiers did not serve in the infantry, and therefore did not suffer the ordeals of frontline combat. For those who did, only a fraction of the time was spent in the frontline, and this could often mean serving in a quiet and comparatively safe sector of the front. The terrors of war, moreover, were alleviated by the positive aspects of war experience, such as comradeship and a sense of purpose, and for these reasons, not all soldiers became disillusioned by their experiences.10 Rather, scholars have argued that this narrative of disillusionment was constructed by a small band of now-canonical writers and poets whose attitudes and experiences were not representative of the average soldier.11

Introduction

3

And, despite notions of a ‘lost generation’, historians also remind us that the British military dead totalled around 722,000 – approximately 11.8 per cent of those mobilized during the war.12 Whether disillusioned or not, most soldiers did in fact return home. Correcting myths, however, has not solely been the preserve of military historians. Approaches in social and cultural history have also debunked elements of the war’s mythology. Dismantling the notion that the conflict was a ‘radical discontinuity’, scholars have argued that the pre-war world was far from an idyllic ‘Edwardian summer’, and was in fact marred by domestic strife. High levels of unemployment and poverty fuelled labour unrest, while resentment over British rule in Ireland led to fears of a civil war. The increasingly militant suffragette movement was a cause for grave concern, while growing international tension and wars in the Balkans made a European war far from inconceivable.13 The transformative effects of the conflict have similarly been called into question. In The Deluge (1965), the historian Arthur Marwick argued that the war instigated lasting change, pointing, for example, to new freedoms for women, improvements for the working class and an expansion of state control,14 but scholars have since downplayed the extent of these social changes.15 Jay Winter, moreover, has questioned the conflict’s status as a cultural caesura, arguing that the war was not as great a rupture in European cultural history as has been previously suggested.16 A preoccupation with the war’s literary and cultural legacy, however, has also led to a wealth of scholarship discussing the construction and transmission of the conflict’s popular memory, with Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) especially influential in this regard. Fussell argued that the First World War was instrumental in effectuating the ironic mode of expression in literature and culture which was to characterize the twentieth century,17 and yet, despite his compelling thesis, his methodology has since been justifiably critiqued. Fussell’s evidence is primarily drawn from the writings of a narrow pool of English subalterns  – including Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden and Wilfred Owen  – and he therefore overlooks the broad range of writing triggered by the war, much of which was traditional, patriotic and free of ironic inflections. Through portraying the war as a radical shift in cultural expression, moreover, The Great War and Modern Memory has become, like the literature it discusses, an important locus of First World War mythology, further characterizing the war as an irreversible rupture with the past.18 Literary and cultural historians have since shown a greater awareness of the war’s mythology. Samuel Hynes, through an analysis of British cultural

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responses, both during and after the conflict, has charted the construction of this ‘imaginative version’ of the war, demonstrating that the perception of the war as cultural watershed is a myth in itself.19 Janet Watson, moreover, has demonstrated that the way people remembered the war in the 1920s and 1930s differed considerably from the way they understood it while it was taking place. Disillusionment, she argues, was largely a product of the post-war years.20 Toby Thacker’s recent study of a range of cultural responses to the war similarly supports this assertion.21 While critics like Fussell and Hynes have focused solely on high culture and canonical writings, other scholars have analysed popular literature published after the conflict, much of which, as in wartime, conveyed traditional and patriotic messages. Rosa Maria Bracco and Hugh Cecil, for example, have demonstrated that a range of more conservative, edifying representations of the war was popular during the 1920s and 1930s.22 We now know, therefore, that disillusionment was not the only post-war response to the conflict. A plethora of literary criticism over the last two decades has similarly sought to transcend the canon. Scholars such as Angela K.  Smith and Jane Potter, for example, have focused on neglected women’s writing from the war,23 while Anne-Marie Einhaus, in a recent study, has provided the first in-depth examination of short stories about the war. Einhaus discusses how short stories have reflected and contested dominant memories of the conflict, and illustrates how the formation of the canon, which has largely excluded short stories, has paralleled the development of the war’s mythology.24 A number of influential works, including those by Hynes and Watson, conclude their studies of the war’s cultural legacy before the Second World War. Hynes, for instance, states that his story ends in the early 1930s ‘with the myth of the war fixed’.25 In this book, however, in addition to discussing the interwar years, I examine the memory of the First World War in the latter half of the twentieth century. This is crucial. As scholars such as Dan Todman have argued, it was during the decades after the Second World War that a mythology of the Great War began to solidify in Britain.26 Through discussing the war’s representation in popular culture over the course of the entire twentieth century, Todman’s influential study provides a more complete account of how the mythology of the war developed in Britain. Literature, as Todman convincingly demonstrates, has played an integral part in shaping British perceptions of the Great War. And yet Todman – like many of the other scholars discussed – pays limited attention to the role of publishers and readers in this process. Historians agree that literature is central to the war’s mythology, but commercial forces within the

Introduction

5

book market have been overlooked. Why did publishers choose to publish First World War literature, and how did they promote it? Why did readers read war books, and how did they respond to them? These questions remain unanswered in studies of the war’s memory. Exactly how a mythology of the war was disseminated and received therefore remains unclear. While scholars such as Janet Watson and Andrew Frayn have made efforts to examine the critical reception of literary works,27 the popular reception of First World War literature has not been addressed in detail. Both scholars, moreover, focus solely on the interwar years. Similarly, there are no full-length studies that explore the memory of the First World War over the last hundred years from a publishing perspective.28 Publishing and reception history are therefore central to this study. Much of this historiography, then, is concerned with debunking myths. This is not my primary concern. Rather, I  investigate the role of literature in constructing and reflecting British attitudes to the First World War. While recognizing that the term ‘literature’ is disputed, I draw on what the literary critic Peter Widdowson describes as ‘the literary’ – written works which are self-consciously literary, are perceived to be as such and are creative in the sense of ‘making for the first time’. Widdowson includes in this definition ‘poetry, prose fiction and drama’, but not pamphlets, histories, diaries or manuals, for example.29 I extend Widdowson’s definition, however, to include autobiography and memoir. As Stephen Shapiro has argued, ‘autobiography is literature . . . Literature restructures existential material through the poet’s organization of language’.30 Autobiography therefore contains the literary and creative elements that Widdowson identifies. This broader definition of literature is also in accord with other scholarly approaches to the literary memory of the war. Autobiographies are central to the canon of First World War literature, and much of the fiction, drama and poetry of the war – often written by those with first-hand experience of the events they describe – can be considered partially autobiographical. The texts discussed in this book therefore span various forms and genres, and are selected for their significance in constructing and reflecting understandings of the First World War in Britain since 1918. Much of this literature could therefore be considered ‘popular’ in the broadest sense of the word, for most of these works were read or came to be read by large numbers of people. The influential sociologist Pierre Bourdieu drew distinctions between popular literature, aimed at a mass audience and driven by commercial motives, and avant-garde literature, aimed at a restricted market and motivated by prestige and recognition within intellectual circles.31 Yet many of the works of war literature discussed here resist such categorization. Scholars such as Trudi Tate and Angela K. Smith

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have discussed the relationship between modernism – the defining avant-garde literary movement of the early twentieth century – and war writing, recognizing the blurred boundaries between the two genres.32 War writing frequently incorporated formal or stylistic innovations and achieved literary recognition, while also appealing to a mass market and achieving commercial success. Nevertheless, while many of these works have achieved canonical status, others discussed in this book, while popular when published, now languish in obscurity. Publishers and readers, as we have seen, have been overlooked in many discussions of the Great War’s cultural legacy. This book therefore draws on approaches from the field of Book History to address these oversights. As the book historian Don McKenzie demonstrates, textual ‘meanings are not . . . inherent but are constructed by successive interpretative acts by those who write, design, and print books, and by those who buy and read them’.33 Understanding the role of publishers in promoting and designing books is therefore crucial for understanding the impact of literature upon its readers, and I consult a variety of published and unpublished primary sources to examine the relationship between publishers and war literature throughout the last hundred years. Paratexts, defined by the literary theorist Gérard Genette as a book’s various ‘accompanying productions’, are of particular importance here. Paratexts, according to Genette, are the various elements surrounding a text that present it to the public as a book. These include titles, epigraphs, prefaces, typefaces, dust jackets and notes, for example, in addition to elements external to the book that can influence its reception, such as promotional materials and the author’s correspondence.34 I discuss a variety of paratexts in this study. The blurbs and illustrations on dust jackets, in particular, reveal how publishers chose to market books. I also consult various trade papers for evidence of industry trends, while the advertising contained within them permits a further analysis of publishers’ marketing strategies. Where possible I also draw on unpublished sources from publishing and literary archives. In addition to examining the role of publishers, as McKenzie suggests, we also need to consider how readers interpret texts. Analysing the reception of books is important because, as the cultural historian Roger Chartier notes, ‘reading is not simply submission to textual machinery. Whatever it may be, reading is a creative practice, which invents singular meanings and significations that are not reducible to the intentions of authors of texts or producers of books’.35 To understand the relationship between literature and the memory of the First World War, we must consider not just how authors have represented the war, but also the various ways different readers have interpreted their works. While accepting, as the book historian Robert Darnton notes, ‘the ways that texts constrain

Introduction

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readers’,36 it is crucial to acknowledge that readings can diverge from the intentions of authors and publishers. To address these issues, I  exploit an array of critical reviews found in newspapers, magazines and literary journals. These reviews illustrate how books were interpreted at different times, and allow us to draw links between these interpretations and the political and cultural climate in which they were formed. As the publications in which they were printed sought to match the moods and tastes of readers for commercial reasons, book reviews also help us to gauge broader cultural attitudes. Yet critical reviews alone cannot successfully encapsulate the multiplicity of reader responses. The book historian Jonathan Rose therefore proposes a move towards studying ‘audience histories’, which ‘would focus on the common reader – defined as any reader who did not read books for a living’.37 Evidence of this can be harder to come by, however, as most readers did not record their responses to literature. Nevertheless, where possible, I provide evidence of the responses of non-professional readers. This can be found in a variety of sources. Autobiographical accounts, for example, sometimes recall reading experiences, while the correspondence pages of newspapers and magazines often express readers’ responses to literature. I have also drawn on a number of unpublished, archival sources, including collections of fan mail from author archives, and evidence of library borrowing and reading habits collected by Mass Observation, a social research organization, around the time of the Second World War. Finally, for my analysis of more recent reception patterns, I have used sources from the internet. The website Amazon, for example, encourages customers to post their own reviews of books. While not all the comments posted on the website are necessarily direct responses to a book from someone who has read it, many of these reviews provide an invaluable insight into reader responses. This book, then, is about the relationship between publishing, reading and the memory of the First World War. But what exactly do historians mean when they speak of ‘memory’? The term is certainly elusive if not properly defined. The notion of ‘popular’ or ‘collective’ memory owes much to the interwar theories of the French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, who argued that memories can only be conceived of in collective terms, and that social frameworks determine what and how individuals remember: ‘it is in this sense that there exists a collective memory and social frameworks for memory; it is to this degree that our individual thought places itself in these frameworks and participates in this memory that is capable of act and recollection.’ Developing this idea, Halbwachs asserts that ‘we can remember only on condition of retrieving the position of past events that interest us from the frameworks of collective

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memory’. While memory does not exist outside of individuals, memories are not individual in character, but rather are shaped and determined by these social frameworks. The collective frameworks Halbwachs has in mind are not national in character, but rather operate within smaller groups, such as families, social classes or religious groups, for example.38 Building on the work of Halbwachs, the German scholar Jan Assmann has divided the concept of collective memory into two categories: ‘communicative’ and ‘cultural’ memory. Communicative memory refers to the transmission of memories across generations through ‘everyday interaction and communication’. A veteran sharing stories of his war experience with his children and grandchildren, for example, would be an example of ‘communicative memory’. For Assmann, communicative memory, ‘for this very reason, has only a limited time depth which normally reaches no farther back than eighty years, the time span of three interacting generations’. This emphasis on the family group, as a framework within which memories are shared, is in accord with Halbwachs’s conception of collective memory. The concept of ‘cultural memory’, however, expands the parameters of collective memory to incorporate memories that are symbolized by and communicated through various cultural products, such as texts, objects, rituals or performances.39 In this sense Assmann is partly indebted to the French historian Pierre Nora who devised the concept of ‘les lieux de mémoire’, or ‘sites of memory’ – symbolic places, objects and so on, which reflect conscious efforts to preserve the past and communicate memory.40 Unlike communicative memories, these memories can last for far more than a hundred years. The literary works I discuss in this book are therefore lieux de mémoire, or facets of the ‘cultural memory’ of the Great War. Yet while some cultural artefacts gain this symbolic significance, others are neglected. Aleida Assmann therefore distinguishes between ‘Cultural Working Memory’ and ‘Cultural Reference Memory’. The former denotes those works which have entered the canon, and form only ‘a tiny segment of the vast history of the arts that has the privilege of repeated representation’. The latter term, on the other hand, refers to cultural artefacts stored in archives, for example – those objects, which, while accessible, are not routinely interpreted and have not entered the canon. The boundary between the two, however, is not impermeable. Works of the canon can fall out of favour, and ‘recede into the archive’, while forgotten texts can be rediscovered and ‘reclaimed for the canon’.41 ‘Cultural Working Memory’ is a major focus of this book, for the construction of the canon parallels the emergence of a dominant memory of the conflict. However,

Introduction

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non-canonical works, those that are no longer in print, should not be neglected. Many of these texts reflected popular understandings of the war when they were published, even if they are now forgotten. By exploring how texts were neglected or canonized, and the role that publishers and readers played in this process, we gain a greater insight into the formation of the war’s collective memory. The historians Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan have introduced a further term, ‘collective remembrance’, which they define as ‘the act of gathering bits and pieces of the past, and joining them together in public’. The important link here for them is human agency – the deliberate attempts of people to share ideas about the past in public. Crucially, the result of this process ‘is greater than the sum of its parts’; it is not simply a cluster of individual memories.42 Winter and Sivan therefore avoid the term ‘collective memory’ and, through their emphasis on agency, ground this phenomenon in the practices of individuals. In this book I also stress the importance of agents, the most obvious of which are the authors of literary works. But authors are not the only agents in this equation. Publishers, for providing the commercial impetus behind the production of literature, are also key agents. And readers are equally important, for an understanding of the reception of cultural products is crucial to any study of cultural memory.43 As the cultural historian Alon Confino argues, ‘the crucial issue is not what is represented but how this representation has been interpreted and received’.44 If we are to understand how memories of the past are preserved and transmitted through cultural products, we must analyse their reception. The concept of collective memory is not without its detractors, however. Noa Gedi and Yigal Elam, for example, have expressed deep scepticism, arguing that collectives should not be conceived of ‘as having capabilities that are in fact actualized only on an individual level’.45 Samuel Hynes has raised similar concerns, interrogating the notion of ‘collective memory’ in relation to soldiers’ memoirs. Hynes dismisses the idea that a memoir could be deemed a collective memory, ‘because one man’s 1 July 1916 is not everyman’s, and is not ours, and even the most vivid words cannot change that fact’. Memory, according to Hynes, is therefore only possible on an individual level, for those with direct experience. Collective ideas about the past, Hynes stresses, are not the same thing as memory: ‘you may have an image of the past in your mind, but it isn’t memory but something else, a social construction, history’. Hynes therefore uses the term ‘myth’ in order ‘to identify the simplified, dramatized story that has evolved in our society to contain the meanings of the war that we can tolerate’.46 Mythmaking, as Hynes has noted elsewhere, is therefore ‘socially necessary’, allowing us to understand and draw lessons from the past. Myths such as these have been

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Publishers, Readers and the Great War

used both to justify and to condemn war.47 Jay Winter has shown how myths of war enthusiasm and martial spirit, for instance, were used in France to promote the war effort.48 The mythology of the war in Britain today, on the other hand, does quite the opposite. I also use the term ‘myth’ to denote specific narratives of the war: these narratives may not be entire falsehoods, but they are simplifications or distortions of a more complex historical record. The notion that the war was futile, for example, is one of these myths. I  therefore also use the term ‘mythology’ when referring to the body of these myths that have developed in British popular culture. These myths are frequently complementary, perpetuating the perception of the war as a futile disaster, but they are not necessarily dependent on one another. Embracing this terminology, however, does not mean that we have to reject ‘collective memory’ as an historical concept. Memories, as Halbwachs and Assmann have suggested, are not purely individual phenomena; collective understandings of the First World War have developed in Britain over the last hundred years, and these shared perceptions continue to determine how the war is represented and commemorated. And while few people have individual memories of the First World War today, this does not make ‘memory’ a redundant term. When we read a book about the First World War, even if neither the author nor we have experienced the event, we are still engaging with a complex web of memories that have been transmitted through human interactions and an array of cultural products. These shared beliefs about the past, as Stephen Trout has argued, ‘can carry the emotional force and conviction of personal memories’, even if they are not based on direct experience of the event in question.49 The memory of the First World War is alive and well, even if the participants are not. It remains crucial, however, to distinguish between the individual memories of those who were there, and the collective memories which have been shared within groups. Moreover, I do not use the terms ‘mythology’ and ‘collective memory’ interchangeably in this book. Here, I use the term ‘mythology’ to denote the specific body of myths, identified by historians, which characterize the war as horrific and futile. This mythology, by the end of the twentieth century, had become the dominant collective memory of the First World War, but it was not the only one to arise over the course of the last hundred years. I argue that distinct collective memories have coexisted at different times, and these have not always been in accord with the mythology, or dominant memory, that exists today. By building on these theories, and through addressing the neglected aspects of reception and publishing history, this book provides a more complete picture of how the mythology of this ‘literary war’ was constructed over the course of

Introduction

11

the last hundred years. It takes a chronological approach, analysing the production and reception of literature from 1918 until the present, focusing on a number of critical periods and a selection of exemplary texts which help to illuminate the relationship between literature and the memory of the First World War. The first three chapters investigate the interwar years, with a particular focus on the ‘war books boom’ of the late 1920s and early 1930s. This was a crucial period during which the mythology of the war began to take shape, but it also witnessed great debate among readers concerning the value and meaning of the conflict. Chapter  1 investigates the role of the publishing industry during this period, exploring its role in developing, reinforcing and transmitting the mythology of the war. Chapter 2 explores responses to literature during these years. I focus here on both critical and popular responses, analysing the controversy that the ‘war books boom’ generated and revealing the various attitudes and values which underpinned responses to war literature. Chapter 3 examines the publication and reception of two important but contrasting books: Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero (1929) and Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933). Death of a Hero exemplifies the war’s mythology, and its publishing and reception history illustrate the complex and divisive nature of the conflict’s memory during this period. Testament of Youth, as one of the key female responses to the war, reveals the relationship between gender and the construction of popular narratives. The final three chapters of this book are chronologically contained. Chapter 4 explores the publication and reception of literature during the 1940s. This is an overlooked but critical period:  myths of the Great War were reinforced, contested and constructed as a consequence of renewed hostilities with Germany, as my analysis of literary developments during this period illustrates. Chapter 5 then assesses the relationship between literature and the memory of the First World War shortly before, during and after the great renewal of interest in the conflict during the 1960s. This decade was crucial in shaping perceptions of the First World War, as I demonstrate in three case studies concerning the works of Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen and Vera Brittain. Texts by these authors were republished between the late 1950s and the late 1970s, and their publication and reception history reveals much about the war’s evolving cultural legacy during this period. Finally, Chapter 6 addresses the popular memory of the war since the 1990s, with a specific focus on veteran testimony and its reception since the millennium. There has been little analysis of these recent developments, but the last veterans came to occupy a central position in the collective memory of the war and are therefore critical to this study. Through exploring these issues, I question the supposed hegemony of the First World War’s mythology in contemporary Britain.

12

1

Publishing the First World War, 1919–1930

In February 1919 the trade paper of the book industry, The Bookseller, reflected on the tumultuous year just passed, and looked to the future. Understandably, the impact of the war upon literary trends was the main issue under consideration: Though a few new war-books continue to come to birth, there can be no doubt that for the present the majority of readers are fighting shy of this class of literature . . . For the present, most of us ‘have no use for’ descriptions of scenes and episodes of the Great War, and the more vivid the words and pictures are the more we feel inclined to shrink from them and cry ‘Hold, enough!’1

This perception of the marketplace adds credence to Samuel Hynes’s notion that ‘for a period of nearly a decade, there was a curious imaginative silence about the greatest occurrence in history’. To explain this supposed silence, Hynes suggested that temporal distance was necessary for retrospective literature to address adequately the war’s horror, and that fears of a future conflict may have encouraged many of the influential war books to be written in the late 1920s and early 1930s, rather than immediately after the conflict.2 But curiously absent from Hynes’s analysis is any reference to a key driving force behind literary trends: the book market. The above extract suggests that the reading public, in the immediate aftermath of war, was less likely to want to revisit the experience, and the publishing industry appears to have helped construct this view. In the following months, the same columnist would reiterate this point in The Bookseller, arguing in May 1919 that returning veterans with stories to tell would be unwise ‘in assisting to flood the book market with a new Niagara of war literature’. The article warned ‘young writers who are just now doffing their khaki, and exchanging the gun for the pen’, that ‘unless you have something wholly unique and exceptional to record, leave the war alone for the present’.3 The Bookseller

14

14

Publishers, Readers and the Great War

was founded in 1858 with the aim of unifying the information found in disparate publishers’ and booksellers’ catalogues, and was the pre-eminent trade journal by this stage.4 Although it could not of course encompass all opinions within a large and diverse industry, it reflected major currents of publishing opinion. The industry, therefore, appears to have actively dissuaded the writing and publishing of war literature in 1919, directly affecting consumption by the reading public. This was no doubt in response to the recent saturation of the market. War books had sold in large numbers during the war itself, helping the publishing industry to maintain profits amidst testing economic circumstances.5 This wartime boom carried over into 1919 and 1920, with a continued flow of memoirs, but it appears that publishers and readers were beginning to tire of the genre.6 Certainly those working in publishing with an enthusiasm for war literature were in the minority. Edward Garnett, for example, who later became an influential reader for Jonathan Cape Ltd, was keen to publish war books, but had little support from John Lane, the director at the Bodley Head.7 Authors could also testify to the difficulty of publishing war books during this period. Herbert Read had served as an officer in the Yorkshire Regiment, winning the Military Cross in 1917 and the DSO in 1918, but he had left the army a convinced pacifist.8 His war memoir was then rejected in 1919, because his publishers were not interested in ‘anything bleak’.9 It was therefore the stance of the publishing industry, more than the reticence of writers, which restricted the production of war literature. The industry appears to have imposed this silence, perceiving a public reluctance to read about the war, and this relationship was of course mutually reinforcing, with the publishing industry’s cautiousness further discouraging public interest. But despite Hynes’s explanation for the ‘imaginative silence’, it appears that some authors did want to revisit their experiences. These examples demonstrate that publishers could play an active role in shaping the literary response to the war, and consequently could be instrumental in determining how it was remembered. This chapter explores how publishers constructed, reflected and reinforced collective memories of the war through the books they chose to publish and the various methods they used to promote them during the interwar years. In particular, I discuss the shifts and continuities in publishers’ marketing strategies, from their initial reluctance to publish books at the beginning of the 1920s, through to the ‘war books boom’, which began in 1928 and persisted until 1930. During this period a wave of successful war books were published, many of which would play an important role in shaping the war’s mythology and would go on to achieve canonical literary status.

Publishing the First World War, 1919–1930

15

The interwar publishing industry Publishers were predominantly based in the City and the West End of London. In the late nineteenth century, the industry was awash with small firms, and characterized by rampant competition, but the introduction of the Net Book Agreement in 1899, which fixed the prices for books, led to a more stable market. The security afforded by this protected market encouraged conservatism within the industry, with many firms seeking to follow popular trends rather than break new ground. For commercial reasons, this was understandable, as it guaranteed profits and safeguarded against failure.10 There was therefore an emphasis on the ‘middlebrow’, a term which emerged in the 1920s, and was used to describe popular novels and plays with comfortable, conservative messages.11 Middlebrow fiction appealed to popular tastes, was unlikely to cause offence, and allowed publishers to maximize profits while maintaining a respectable reputation. Nevertheless, the industry remained diverse: new firms were established during the interwar years that would successfully make their mark, and while characterized by conservatism, the period was not without innovation. Publishing in the early twentieth century was dominated by a large number of family firms, many of which had been formed in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, and passed from fathers to their sons.12 During the interwar years, one of the largest of these was the House of Macmillan, founded in 1843. During the First World War, and until 1936, it was led by Frederick Macmillan, whose nephew Daniel was also a director at the firm. Daniel’s younger brother, the future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, was also a partner in the business, and both had served as officers on the Western Front during the First World War. Known for its conservative caution, Macmillan tended to publish respectable popular authors, such as Rudyard Kipling and Hugh Walpole, rather than more challenging or experimental fiction.13 By the time of the First World War, other well-established firms founded in the nineteenth century, including Cassell (1848), Hodder and Stoughton (1868), Hutchinson and Company (1887) and J. M. Dent (1888), had also built successful lists with a strong emphasis on popular fiction. Although a conservative appeal to middlebrow tastes may have been the prevailing ethos among many publishers during the interwar years, not all firms were solely concerned with publishing for commercial gain. Fiction publishing was also the chief focus of the Bodley Head, founded by John Lane in 1887, but the firm gained a reputation for publishing higher quality literature, including

16

16

Publishers, Readers and the Great War

esteemed works by the likes of H. G. Wells, James Joyce and Graham Greene.14 Methuen & Company – formed by Algernon Methuen in 1889 – made healthy profits from popular fiction, but also published modernist works from the likes of Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot.15 Gerald Duckworth, founded in 1898, similarly illustrated a commitment to avant-garde literature, publishing Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford and Osbert Sitwell, for instance.16 Chatto & Windus, founded in 1855, also began to cement a reputation for publishing high-quality literature, particularly during the 1920s when under the direction of Harold Raymond and Charles Prentice. As Ian Norrie has noted, Chatto & Windus ‘had a list which was nicely balanced between what would sell and what deserved to’.17 This combination of shrewd business acumen and an eye for literary talent is also evident in the firm’s approach to war books: Chatto & Windus would play an instrumental role in constructing the mythology of the First World War. Other firms, such as Allen & Unwin, led by the shrewd and enterprising Stanley Unwin, placed a greater emphasis on non-fiction publishing. Unwin was sympathetic to left-wing beliefs and was keen to publish social science works which advanced progressive political perspectives.18 When extolling his publishing philosophy in 1926, Unwin argued that ‘to offer the public just what it wants, to pander to the worst prejudices of the moment, may be the speediest way to profits here, as elsewhere, but it is a dull road to follow’.19 Not all publishers, therefore, were conservative in outlook. Indeed, perhaps the most notable interwar publisher with regard to his political outlook was Victor Gollancz, who founded his publishing house, Victor Gollancz Limited, in 1927. Gollancz combined commercial acumen and innovative marketing strategies with a clear political agenda, furnishing his list with both middlebrow fiction and social science works which espoused his left-wing political beliefs. He too would play an integral role in the promotion of war literature.20 An innovative approach to the industry was also evident among a number of new firms established during the interwar period, one of the most successful of which was Jonathan Cape Limited, founded in 1921. Unlike many men in the industry, Cape – the son a builder – had received little formal education, but entered the industry as an apprentice bookseller. Like many of the influential interwar publishers, Cape was a veteran of the Great War, having served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, where he reached the rank of Captain.21 Realizing that his modest upbringing might hold him back when working at many other houses, Cape decided to establish his own firm in partnership with the young Cambridge graduate G. Wren Howard. Cape was known primarily for his commercial instincts,22 but his hiring of Edward Garnett as a reader ensured that

Publishing the First World War, 1919–1930

17

the firm also gained a reputation for literary integrity. One of Cape’s important contributions was his introduction of talented American authors to the British market, including, among others, Ernest Hemingway.23 A similar emphasis on literary quality was a defining feature of Faber and Faber Limited, a firm initially founded as Faber and Gwyer in 1924. Its owner, the Oxford educated Geoffrey Faber, was committed to publishing poetry, and hired T. S. Eliot as an editor, despite the fact that poetry publishing rarely proved to be a profitable enterprise.24 Faber too was a veteran of the war, and had served in the London Regiment in both France and Belgium, reaching the rank of Captain in 1916.25 Both Cape and Faber – alongside smaller firms founded in the early twentieth century, including Martin Secker (1910) and Peter Davies Limited (1926) – would also have a hand to play in the construction of the mythology of the First World War.26 A number of influential publishers documented the publishing process during the interwar years. Stanley Unwin’s The Truth about Publishing (1926), Frank Swinnerton’s Authors and the Book Trade (1932) and John Hampden’s edited collection, The Book World (1935), all offer invaluable insights into the operation of the industry. In Hampden’s collection, W. G. Taylor, the managing director of J.  M. Dent and president of the Publishers Association, provides a concise yet comprehensive overview of the publishing process. As Taylor noted, when a manuscript arrived at a publishing house, a publisher’s reader would usually determine its suitability for publication.27 The exact role of a reader could vary:  some would work solely with the publisher, but others, like the aforementioned Edward Garnett, would liaise actively with authors, often offering substantial advice and influencing the form and content of books. Due to this crucial role in the selection and revision of books, publishers’ readers therefore could exert a great influence on the book market, helping to shape literary trends.28 Once a relationship had been established with an author, often through the work of a reader, the influence of the publisher increased. Taylor observed, for example, that publishers would sometimes become ‘sufficiently discerning a judge of a writer’s talent to be able to suggest themes for his pen’.29 This was the sometimes the case with war books. But what exactly motivated publishers to publish books in the first place? Commercial considerations, to be sure, were paramount; publishers needed to stay in business, and the pursuit of profit was a driving force for those firms that specialized in popular fiction aimed at the mass market. Swinnerton – a prolific author, reviewer and former reader at Chatto & Windus – suggested that new publishers, without an established reputation, were inevitably less discerning, publishing whatever they could get their hands on, and here profit was also

18

18

Publishers, Readers and the Great War

the prime driver. A seasoned publisher, however, who could attract bestselling authors and guarantee profits, could, if he so wished, ‘indulge his taste or his flair’, as Swinnerton put it. Although a degree of commercial success was essential, therefore, this was not the only source of motivation. Swinnerton claimed that the main reason why publishers chose to publish books was because they ‘hope that this particular book is a good book . . . in many cases they do this without prospect of gain’. What constituted a ‘good’ book, of course, depended on the motivations of the publisher concerned, but Swinnerton implies that literary or ideological factors could take precedence over commercial drivers. Although this may not have been true for all firms, Swinnerton was keen to uphold the reputation of publishers, quick to dismiss any notion that they were simply chasing profits. He even expressed his disbelief that a publisher could be ‘described as rapacious, when his first anxiety is that of continued solvency’.30 The high-minded ideals of firms such as Allen & Unwin and Victor Gollancz support Swinnerton’s claims, but the move towards commercially viable middlebrow literature among other publishers suggests that potential profit remained the factor that most commonly underpinned commissioning decisions. Following the acceptance of a manuscript, publishers would usually buy the rights to publish a work exclusively, often with an agreement to pay the author royalties based on the sale price or total income, rather than on profit.31 It was therefore possible for an author to make money from a book even if a publisher made a loss. Advance payments and subsidies would also sometimes be given in order to encourage promising authors.32 From the 1880s onwards, literary agents would frequently negotiate these deals on behalf of authors, in return for a share, usually ten per cent, of the author’s income.33 Although publishers may have initially been resentful towards the interference of these middlemen, literary agents appear to have been an accepted and even welcome feature of the literary scene by the interwar years. Swinnerton, for example, suggested that many publishers began to appreciate dealing with agents who, unlike most authors, at least had a sound understanding of the legal and financial aspects of the industry.34 Following the agreement of the contract, a manuscript would then be passed to the production department at a publishing house and transformed into a book. The print-run and price of a book would be based on the cost of production, a careful reading of the market and a prediction of likely demand. To do so required communication with librarians and booksellers, who helped publishers to gauge literary trends. Publishers would then exploit a number of methods in order to bring the book to the attention of the public. A relatively new, but increasingly important, marketing tool at this stage was the illustrated dust jacket. Book jackets

Publishing the First World War, 1919–1930

19

had initially been intended simply as protective coverings, although by the beginning of the twentieth century many were beginning to carry blurbs, which were usually printed on the inside flaps of the jacket. These tended to be written by the authors themselves, but it was not unusual for publishers to modify them as they saw fit.35 Around the turn of the century publishers also began to experiment with illustrated jackets, and by the time of the First World War many had begun to recognize the commercial potential of these designs, particularly when marketing popular fiction.36 Hodder and Stoughton, for instance, used arresting illustrations for many of their wartime books.37 It was not until the 1920s, however, that more eye-catching covers became widespread, and even then plainer designs were still common. Colourful jackets, as Stanley Unwin noted, were expensive to produce, and, as they were frequently discarded, not all publishers had unanimously embraced them by the interwar years.38 Richard de la Mare, for instance, who was responsible for book design and production at Faber and Faber, described the dust jacket in 1936 as a ‘wretched thing . . . of which we sometimes deplore the very existence’. Nevertheless, he recognized the marketing value of book jackets, and conceded that ‘we must consider ourselves wedded to the innovation’.39 Indeed, the growing use of pictorial dust jackets reflected the increasing commercialization of the industry during the interwar years, as publishers sought to find new ways to attract a burgeoning mass market for books.40 Publishers would also promote their books through house catalogues, seasonal lists and, of course, by advertising in the press.41 The merits of the latter, however, were debated, not least because of the expense it incurred.42 Swinnerton, for example, was cynical, stressing that ‘advertising does not sell books’. His reasoning was ‘that we never notice advertisements until the things they advertise are familiar to us’.43 Unwin expressed similar sentiments, arguing ‘that it pays to advertise a book if it shows signs of being successful without advertising, but . . . it does not pay to advertise at all expensively a book that shows no sign of catching on’. Advertising alone was not deemed sufficient to stimulate sales, but it might encourage people to buy a book if they had already heard of the title or were considering purchasing it anyway. Books by popular authors with bestselling potential were therefore advertised extensively in the national press; most other books would receive more modest promotion in trade papers and literary publications.44 Publishers also felt that aiming a book towards a mass audience in national newspapers was less effective than using a smaller publication to target a specific audience.45 Interest in a book could also be generated through the distribution of copies for review. As with advertising, not all publishers were convinced of the value

20

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Publishers, Readers and the Great War

of reviews. Again, Swinnerton was dismissive, portraying critics as belonging to a feuding, bickering ‘coterie’. As most were authors themselves, Swinnerton argued, many critics used reviews to take a swipe at their rivals, often in revenge if they had fallen victim to a similar tactic. Consequently Swinnerton doubted their influence on the wider public,46 as did W. G. Taylor, for similar reasons.47 Despite this, Unwin stressed that the distribution of copies was a task to be taken seriously by the publisher, as it was important to ensure that interested publications were informed of the book. He admitted, however, that the ‘selling value of Press notices is most uncertain’.48 Although publishers were keen to downplay the profitability of the industry, the demand for books had never been higher. Despite the challenges of emergent cultural media, such as the radio and the cinema, and despite the impact of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the publishing industry expanded during the interwar years. Since the achievement of mass literacy in the late nineteenth century, a mass market for books had emerged, and it was the desire to meet this demand that encouraged the move towards popular fiction among many publishers. This growing readership, comprising the lower-middle and working classes, came to be known as the ‘New Reading Public’.49 The majority of these readers, however, did not buy their books. Most hardback books cost between seven and ten shillings, whereas the average working man’s weekly wage was only three pounds and ten shillings during the interwar years.50 From around 1890 onwards, the rise of cheap reprints of classic literature, aimed at a mass-market audience, did make books more affordable,51 but readers were more likely to obtain their books from public and subscription libraries.52 The latter, which usually charged readers an annual fee in exchange for borrowing rights, were often run by large companies, such as Smiths and Boots. Their financial clout and extensive distribution networks meant that ‘they were the most important and significant purchasers of the novels that were produced during the years 1880 to 1940’.53 Since the Public Libraries Act of 1919, which placed the control of libraries in the hands of County Councils, there had also been a great expansion in the number of public libraries:  in 1924 the number of books stocked totalled 15 million; by 1949 this had risen to 42 million.54 It was therefore through sales to the libraries, more than to the booksellers, that publishers made their profits. But how much money could publishers expect to make? Swinnerton, again keen to stress the challenges publishers faced, estimated that as many as seventy-five per cent of the books published each year resulted in losses or only minuscule profits. Successful books, however, although rare, could be highly profitable, offsetting losses made elsewhere. Any book that

Publishing the First World War, 1919–1930

21

sold over 1,000 copies was considered a success; over 5,000 copies was deemed ‘a great success’; books selling over 10,000 were ‘seen everywhere’; over ‘a hundred thousand copies’ he considered ‘a miracle’.55 Due to the difficulty of achieving such high sales, publishing may not have been especially lucrative on a personal level. Unwin, for example, noted that the renowned publishers John Lane and J. M. Dent had left behind £12,000 and £14,000 respectively after their deaths in the 1920s, whereas the famous author Rider Haggard had left £61,000 and the literary agent A. P. Watt £60,000.56 Nevertheless, Unwin neglected to mention that his own salary of £3,000 a year in 1926 made him, relative to most Britons, a very wealthy man indeed.57

Marketing the middlebrow war novel Despite the initial reluctance of the industry to publish war literature, some immensely successful war books were published shortly after the conflict. Rather than choosing to forget about the war, most Britons were keen to recognize the sacrifices of the dead.58 This was reflected in a variety of practices, such as the establishment of the cenotaph and the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in London in 1920, in addition to the building of war memorials across the country. Middlebrow literature that complemented this memorial culture was welcome. Gilbert Frankau’s Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant (1919), for example, went on to become a bestseller: it was the first post-war novel to sell over a 100,000 copies,59 with 199,000 sold by the early 1930s.60 Frankau had already established his reputation as a popular author before the war, had served as an artillery officer on the Western Front and had been invalided out of the army with shell shock in 1918.61 Peter Jackson drew heavily on Frankau’s war experiences, vividly narrating the fighting at Loos, the Somme, and Ypres, while also weaving in a traditional love story. In this respect, the book is typical of many popular, patriotic war novels which were written between 1919 and 1925.62 The novel’s success suggests that both publishers and readers were not necessarily averse to war literature, provided it conveyed a comforting vision of the war. This is not to say that Frankau shies away from the horrors of the conflict; he depicts, for example, ‘mangled men writhing and groaning’ on the battlefield, but this extract perhaps best illustrates his attitude: ‘we who did our best for him know that it was the humble “common man”, “poor bloody tommy” . . . hungry sometimes, tired mostly, frightened to the depths of his unimaginative soul, but enduring always, who staved off British defeat and won every British victory’. The war is portrayed

2

22

Publishers, Readers and the Great War

here as both terrifying and exhausting, but what separates this novel from the wartime poetry of Wilfred Owen, or later representations such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), is that there is no hint of futility. Despite Frankau’s patronising tone, he celebrates the British Tommy’s stoical resilience and contribution to Britain’s ultimate triumph. Elsewhere, Frankau also eulogizes the unquestioning commitment to duty, inculcated by the public school ethos, which drove the officer class to keep fighting.63 As with most works published during the war itself, the conflict is therefore maintained and memorialized as a worthwhile patriotic duty, in service of a valid cause.64 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant was first published in serialized form in Land and Water magazine during the autumn of 1919, and published as a book the following year by Hutchinson. Frankau had not initially considered serializing the work, but had been advised to do so by a bookseller, who assured him of the commercial benefits.65 The serialization of novels was certainly common at the time, and, in terms of earnings, was beneficial for authors.66 Land and Water, edited by the writer Hilaire Belloc, promoted the book as an ‘authentic’ account of the war, and would continue to focus on the conflict by publishing short stories and articles relating to this theme throughout 1919.67 The aforementioned attitudes expressed by The Bookseller, however, suggest that Belloc may have been swimming against the tide. The wider reluctance of the industry to publish on this theme is also evident in Hutchinson’s promotion of the book, which concealed the novel’s war themes so greatly that a review in Punch magazine commented that ‘the publishers . . . seem in their announcements to be desperately afraid lest anyone should guess it to be a War book. It is, they suggest, the story of the flowering of perfect love between two married folk who had drifted apart’.68 An advert for the novel in The Times illustrates this point. Despite including a lengthy descriptive paragraph, Hutchinson omitted any reference to the war, summarizing the book instead as ‘a romance which centres around the married life of the average man and woman’.69 The novel’s romantic plot was brought to the forefront and its war themes downplayed. This marketing strategy is also reflected in the design of the book’s dust jacket. The front cover describes the book as a ‘romance of married life’, and the artwork, depicting a couple embracing in front of an idyllic sunset, is suggestive of a traditional romance (Figure 1.1). Hutchinson evidently feared that war books would not sell, and the dust jacket was therefore an ideal tool with which the novel’s war themes could be disguised at the expense of its romantic plot. If Hynes’s ‘imaginative silence’ regarding the conflict is detectable, therefore, this may be because publishers like Hutchinson stifled any noise. Those elements

Publishing the First World War, 1919–1930

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Figure 1.1 Dust jacket design for the first edition of Gilbert Frankau’s Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant (Hutchinson, 1920).

that typify the war’s mythology, such as disillusionment and futility, are largely absent from Frankau’s book, and its marketing complements this. By publishing more palatable war books and promoting them cautiously, however, publishers were testing the market. This in turn would pave the way for the vehement denunciations of war that would characterize the late 1920s. There were other successful war books published shortly after the conflict, but these also tended to portray the war effort in a positive light. For instance, Ernest Raymond’s Tell England (1922), published by Cassell, is infused with

24

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Publishers, Readers and the Great War

the language of Christian sacrifice, attributing value and meaning to its otherwise tragic depiction of youth cut short in its prime.70 The book was an instant bestseller. In one 1922 advert for the book Cassell noted that ‘the fifth impression of this remarkable romance is exhausted’ and apologized for ‘any delays in filling orders due to the enormous demand’.71 By the end of 1923, the book had been through twenty-one impressions,72 and it remained popular throughout the interwar years with over 300,000 copies sold by 1939.73 Tell England’s success again illustrates that the public was not necessarily against war literature per se, as long as it provided a comforting vision. Cassell was also cautious in making direct allusions to the horror of war, instead constructing the book’s appeal in romantic terms, as the dust jacket to the first edition illustrates (Figure 1.2). Like Hutchinson, Cassell appears to have feared that the public would not be receptive to overt war themes. There is therefore no reference to the war at all on this cover; Cassell simply described the book instead as a ‘romance of glorious youth’. The lofty ideals and rhetoric that characterized the popular wartime poems of Rupert Brooke, for instance, are reiterated here, complementing the novel’s rousing tone. The wilting rose alludes to tragedy, but is gently sentimental rather than abrasively bleak. This evasion of direct war references again suggests that publishers were partially responsible for the perception of an ‘imaginative silence’, promoting only a particular type of war novel, and ensuring that its war themes were downplayed in favour of traditional and comforting symbols. The success of Frankau’s and Raymond’s works stands in marked contrast to the fortunes of those books published shortly after the war which avoided patriotic themes. A. P. Herbert’s The Secret Battle (1919), for example, was a risky venture on the part of its publishers, Methuen. In its depiction of the court martial and execution of a soldier shot for cowardice during the Gallipoli campaign, the novel provided a damning indictment of military discipline, yet Methuen chose to emphasize, rather than disguise, the novel’s disillusionment. An advert for the book in The Times, for instance, promoted it as ‘a novel describing the human side of the soldier – his fears and everyday distresses of his life; of the gradual decay of his illusions; of his courage and his failure’.74 This may have been a faithful representation of the novel, but it did little to entice the public; despite some positive reviews, the book was a commercial failure, and in December 1919 Methuen omitted The Secret Battle from a full-page advert listing sixty of its titles.75 In this sense, the reluctance of many publishers to promote similar works is understandable.

Publishing the First World War, 1919–1930

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Figure 1.2 Dust jacket design for the first edition of Ernest Raymond’s Tell England (Cassell, 1922). Courtesy of the Orion Publishing Group.

Most books published in the few years after the war therefore provided conservative, consoling visions of the conflict, and many, such as Wilfrid Ewart’s Way of Revelation (1921), A.  S. M.  Hutchinson’s If Winter Comes (1921) and Robert Keable’s Simon Called Peter (1921), were commercially successful.76 If Winter Comes, in particular, was one of the bestselling novels of the 1920s, selling 115,000 copies in Britain within the first year of its publication. The literary

26

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Publishers, Readers and the Great War

Figure 1.3 Dust jacket design for the first edition of A. S. M. Hutchinson’s If Winter Comes (Hodder and Stoughton, 1922).

critic Kirsten MacLeod has discussed the book in the context of critical debates over middlebrow literature during the 1920s, noting how Hutchinson’s novel addresses a number of controversial and sensational themes against the backdrop of war. As is typical of middlebrow literature, however, tensions within the novel are largely resolved, and If Winter Comes concludes on a romantic, uplifting note. The novel’s success owed much to aggressive marketing by its publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, who used a promotional competition in

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its house publication, The Bookman, to drive up sales.77 As with Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant and Tell England, the dust jacket obscured references to the war, although it did hint at the novel’s darker themes with a rather literal and brooding pictorial realization of the book’s title (Figure 1.3). This was not the first time that the war had proved profitable for Hodder and Stoughton. During the conflict the firm had published five entertaining collections of short stories about the war by ‘Sapper’, which together accumulated well over 100,000 copies in sales. In these heroic wartime adventure stories, but also in his post-war detective fiction, Sapper portrayed the war as a purposeful test of masculinity, rather than as a futile tragedy.78 Evidence that the publishing industry approved of this type of literature can also be found in The Bookseller. ‘Rifleman’s’ diary of trench life, Four Years on the Western Front, was welcomed, for example, not only because it depicted the ‘damnableness’ but also because it revealed the ‘unsung heroism’ of its author and depicted ‘the hard lot of thousands of other hard-working heroic men’.79 These books did not depict an entirely sanitized version of the front or ignore the horrors of war, but the publishing industry welcomed them primarily because they also celebrated the achievements of the British Tommy.

Anticipating the ‘war books boom’ A minority of works, however, were published in the early and mid-1920s that did challenge traditional conceptions, destabilizing understandings of the war. The literary critic Andrew Frayn argues that a steady development of First World War prose culminated in the disenchanted climax of the ‘war books boom’, suggesting that works published earlier in the 1920s, such as C. E. Montague’s Disenchantment (1922), R. H. Mottram’s Spanish Farm trilogy (1924–1926) and Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End tetralogy (1924–1928), helped to pave the way for more vitriolic responses.80 Despite the apparent conservatism of many publishers immediately after the war, bolder, more challenging works were published. That these books were often higher brow works of literature is undoubtedly true. Parade’s End, a modernist, avant-garde text, occupied a rather different position in the literary marketplace than Tell England. And middlebrow works continued to find their audience in spite of these more disenchanted responses to the war. Yet the boundaries between popular and avant-garde literature were not impermeable, and disillusionment began to find a popular audience.

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The gradual construction of a disillusioned response to the war in the mid1920s is reflected in the pages of The Bookseller. Stephen McKenna’s novel Tomorrow and To-morrow, for example, was praised in May 1924 for its depiction of ‘the strange paradoxes, the confused and conflicting ideas resulting from the strange outcome of “the war to end war”, which made so many almost lose faith in everything, and which leaves the future quite vague, dark and uncertain’.81 This work is largely forgotten today, but its publication, and the favourable response to it in an industry journal, suggests that publishers were beginning to test reader expectations and drive forward the literary response to the war in new and less comforting directions. Chatto & Windus was instrumental in this regard. In 1920 the firm published Siegfried Sassoon’s collection of Wilfred Owen’s poetry, at a time when Owen was relatively unknown,82 before publishing the aforementioned works of Montague and Mottram. Given the huge success in the early 1920s of more conservative depictions of the war, Chatto & Windus’s decision to publish against the grain reminds us that profit was not always the sole driver for publishers. This privileging of personal taste over profit was significant in the formation of the war’s mythology. Montague’s Disenchantment, for example, sold around 5,000 copies within two years of its publication, and would continue to sell later in the decade, but this was a far smaller figure than that achieved by the successful works of the ‘war books boom’.83 It was also unable to compete with the more conservative responses of Frankau and Raymond. Rather than simply responding to popular demand, Chatto & Windus sought to construct an alternative vision of the war, and by publishing a more challenging, but less commercially appealing work, they helped usher in the more disillusioned, yet highly successful, responses of the ‘war books boom’. By the mid-1920s the more ambitious publishers were not shying away from the war in their promotional techniques either. Chatto & Windus’s blurb to R. H. Mottram’s The Crime at Vanderlynden’s (1926), the final instalment in the Spanish Farm trilogy, noted that the novel ‘presents the barely articulate view of the masses in the ranks, to whom the war was an accident concerning someone else’.84 The blurb’s suggestion that the war may have been meaningless to the majority of soldiers differs starkly from the edifying images of soldiering presented by Frankau and Raymond. The blurb to Ford Madox Ford’s A Man Could Stand Up – (1926), the third instalment in the Parade’s End tetralogy, was also transparent in presenting the novel’s challenging agenda. Ford’s publishers, Duckworth, summarized the book as ‘a vivid and startlingly outspoken description of the state of men’s minds during the growing period of disillusionment

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which ended in the armistice’.85 This emphasis on disenchantment, with an allusion to the conflict’s profound psychological toll, illustrates how publishers had begun openly to question the war’s worth in their promotional material. This was a marked contrast with the exercise in concealment that characterized the publicity for Peter Jackson and Tell England. Despite the growing number of more provocative war books, a 1926 edition of The Bookseller suggests that the industry was not united in its attitude to this type of literature: The American Publishers Weekly suggests that . . . war stories will soon be coming back in popularity. It will probably be a year or two yet before the war story and play is tolerated in this country. When that time comes, it will be interesting to see which, if any, of the war time novels such as ‘Peter Jackson’ will come into demand again, or whether a new style will have arisen, more fanciful and picturesque and heroic.86

By the mid-1920s, romantic middlebrow works such Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant remained the benchmark for war literature, notwithstanding the efforts of firms like Chatto & Windus. Some branches of the industry were evidently still wary of more challenging war books. Tellingly, moreover, this extract suggests that it might take another few years before a resurgence of interest in war literature. This was an entirely accurate prediction: 1929 would prove to be the peak of the boom. Less accurate, however is the suggestion that a new wave of war books might be more ‘picturesque and heroic’. This could not be further from the truth. Rather, many of the boom’s most popular books undercut the concept of heroism, depicting the war in starker, more brutal terms. Some publishers, however, were more astute when it came to predicting literary trends. In 1931, Geoffrey Faber perhaps best summarized the role of the industry in gradually gauging and shaping the public mood in the years preceding the ‘war books boom’: I want to raise the standard of public taste; but it would be fatal folly to outrun the standard of public taste too fast and too far. It is necessary to be constantly readjusting one’s judgment to the facts . . . It is remarkable how the facts will change . . . It is certainly an essential part of the equipment of a publisher who is up to his job to be able to take such changes into account before they occur. Perhaps the most remarkable recent instance of a big change intelligently anticipated by publishers is provided by those two great war books – ‘Sergeant Grischa’ and ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’.87

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As Faber suggests, not all publishers were reactive, waiting for the public mood to change. Rather, some firms sought to mould popular tastes, but did so cautiously, seeking to predict how and when attitudes might shift. The publishing of various war books throughout the decade, some more critical of the war than others, provided an important gauge in this respect. For Faber, the subsequent success of Arnold Zweig’s The Case of Sergeant Grischa and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, both German novels published in Britain in 1928 and 1929, respectively, exemplified the shrewd commercial instincts demonstrated by some publishers.

The ‘war books boom’ Arnold Zweig’s The Case of Sergeant Grischa was first published in Germany in 1927, with Secker publishing an English translation early the following year in Britain.88 A grim tale of a Russian soldier shot for desertion, the novel shares little in common with many middlebrow representations of the war, yet it proved to be a major commercial success. By 1929 the book had sold 120,000 copies in Germany, and by 1930 it had sold an additional 300,000 volumes in translation.89 In Britain the novel occupied bestseller lists until 1929.90 Zweig’s work was one of the first firmly anti-war novels to achieve this popularity, but although singled out by Faber, it was not the only commercially successful war book of 1928. Faber himself published Siegfried Sassoon’s semi-fictional Memoirs of a FoxHunting Man, which although primarily a depiction of its author’s childhood, would contribute to the myth of the Edwardian Summer, particularly when understood in the context of its sequel, Memoirs of An Infantry Officer (1930). Published in September 1928, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man had sold 10,000 copies within two months, and 19,000 by April 1929.91 Its success continued into the 1930s, with 55,000 copies sold by 1935.92 Similarly successful, but concerned entirely with the war, was Edmund Blunden’s memoir, Undertones of War, which depicted its author’s experiences as a young subaltern on the Western Front. Published in November 1928, the first edition sold out in one day,93 and was reprinted three times within a month.94 This was partly a consequence of selfassured marketing from Blunden’s publishers, Cobden Sanderson. An advert in the Publisher and Bookseller predicted that ‘there is likely to be enormous demand for this book . . . MR. COBDEN-SANDERSON confidently recommends it to the trade’.95 Whereas publishers had approached the war with trepidation earlier in the decade, they were increasingly convinced that books casting

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a more critical perspective on the war would sell. If any more proof were needed, the enormous success of R. C. Sherriff ’s play Journey’s End, first performed in December 1928, was a clear indication that a boom was under way. The play would run for 593 performances in the West End, while the book, published by Victor Gollancz, was reprinted thirteen times between January and October 1929,96 selling 175,000 copies.97 Not all of these works signified a homogenous response to the war, however. Although publishers and authors had begun to introduce more negative depictions of the conflict, not all texts reflected a total departure from the more consoling visions of the early 1920s. Blunden shared little of Frankau’s or Raymond’s sense of glory or patriotism, but Undertones of War was far from an outright denunciation of the war. Rather, its measured tone and delicate pastoral allusions tempered its critique of the conflict. Similarly, while Journey’s End is now often seen as an anti-war classic,98 this was certainly not Sherriff ’s intention; the play had much in common with traditional middlebrow literature.99 Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front, on the other hand, is emblematic of the disillusionment and futility that are at the heart of the mythology of the First World War. The novel was first serialized in Germany under the title Im Westen Nichts Neues in 1928, and published as a book in January 1929. Selling over 2.5 million copies in around 20 languages by April 1930, the novel was an international bestseller.100 G. P. Putnam’s Sons – an American firm with a London office – published the English translation in Britain in March 1929. It sold 25,000 copies in a fortnight,101 and by July 1929, after fifteen impressions, 133,000 copies had been sold – a staggering number.102 Constant Huntington, who managed Putnam’s London branch, was responsible for introducing Remarque’s novel to Britain, despite the fact that the firm’s New York office had declined to publish the book in the USA. They had feared that the market for war books was saturated, and had also believed that an antiwar novel written from a German perspective might not appeal to British and American readers.103 Nevertheless, Huntington apparently had a ‘deep urge to shock the public’, and this might explain his decision to publish such a challenging novel.104 All Quiet on the Western Front vividly and brutally focuses on battlefield death and injury, at times reducing the war to a series of gruesome symbols: ‘Dysentry, influenza, typhus  – murder, burning, death. Trenches, hospitals, the common grave  – there are no other possibilities’. This relentless focus on war’s capacity to destroy the human body, combined with Remarque’s pessimistic refusal to assign any meaning to the experience, has helped to establish All Quiet on the

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Western Front as the archetypal disenchantment novel of the First World War. Remarque’s protagonist, Paul Bäumer, embarks on a now familiar journey from patriotic enthusiasm to cynicism and despair, and by the end of the novel ‘is so alone, and so without hope’, that he no longer fears for the future.105 The novel is a bitter lament against the state of the post-war world too.106 Bäumer articulates Remarque’s sense of belonging to a generation of young men who were irreparably damaged by war, betrayed by their elders and left alienated from post-war society: ‘now if we go back we will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope. We will not be able to find our way any more’.107 As Angela Smith has demonstrated, All Quiet on the Western Front borrows from many of the stylistic innovations of modernism, and in this sense it can be read as both a modernist text and a piece of popular war writing.108 This transcending of the boundaries between the popular and the high brow, the attainment of both critical and commercial success, would distinguish many works of the ‘war books boom’. Despite the recent success of some war books, Huntington’s initial marketing of All Quiet on the Western Front was cautious. Putnam’s New York office had advised against the book’s publication, and although the work had already proved popular in Remarque’s native Germany, there was no guarantee it would sell in Britain:  the novel’s negativity could perhaps have been dismissed as a product of Germany’s defeat, were it not for its subsequent international success. Consequently, the original dustcover (Figure  1.4), was reserved, and did not allude to the book’s staunchly pessimistic perspective. This was not unusual – the dust jackets for Undertones of War and Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man also eschewed cover art, which, as noted, had not been fully embraced by all publishers at this stage. The blurb, however, did express Remarque’s post-war malaise, describing the book as an expression ‘of the deep unrest that men of his generation experienced as a result of war’. Ultimately, however, Putnam summarized the book as a description of three things: ‘the war, the fate of a generation and true comradeship’.109 This description hardly does justice to Remarque’s vitriol. While it alludes to the author’s discontent, the blurb does not portray the book as an anti-war novel, giving equal weight to Remarque’s celebration of comradeship. Though Remarque does highlight the value of soldierly bonds, this is overshadowed by the devastation of war: by the end of the novel Bäumer is the only one of his friends still alive, and he too dies on its final page. Putnam’s emphasis of this theme appears to be an attempt to present the novel in a balanced light – perhaps for fear that it would otherwise deter readers. Yet the unrivalled success of the book suggests that the public was becoming more receptive to scenes of horror and a tone of disillusionment. Consequently,

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Figure 1.4 Dust jacket design for the first edition of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (Putnam, 1929).

Putnam employed a more explicit design for the second edition of the book, published a few months later, which directly alerted the reader to the novel’s morbid content (Figure 1.5). This decision reflected a growing pressure on publishers to use more colourful and striking designs. Some firms had been employing colourful dust jackets to great effect earlier in the 1920s, and although many publishers retained more traditional methods, this was becoming less common – particularly in the lucrative, but competitive war book market. As Now

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Figure 1.5 Dust jacket design for the second edition of All Quiet on the Western Front (Putnam, 1929).

and Then, the journal of Jonathan Cape’s publishing house noted in 1929, ‘we have but recently and with difficulty shaken free from the idea of the book jacket as performing the function of book-illustration . . . it is but recently that the art of the poster has been brought to bear upon the art of the book jacket’.110 Book jackets were now also powerful marketing tools. Putnam’s decision to adopt a more striking jacket reflects this shift, but it also reveals how they wished to memorialize the war. In choosing to publish the novel, they had opted to

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promote a disillusioned narrative, but had done so cautiously, hoping to appeal to a broad spectrum of perspectives. Following the initial success of the book, Putnam now felt more comfortable accentuating the novel’s anti-war themes. The success of Journey’s End and All Quiet on the Western Front was followed by a wave of bestselling war literature throughout 1929 and 1930, with many of these books depicting the war in a critical light. Stark and graphic imagery became the norm. Some key texts, such as Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929), Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero (1929), Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That (1929), Frederic Manning’s Her Privates We (1930) and Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) have become central to the canon, but numerous other forgotten works were also published during this period. It was no coincidence that in May 1929, when All Quiet on the Western Front topped the bestseller lists, the pages of the Publisher and Bookseller were replete with adverts for war books. In an advertisement for James B. Wharton’s novel Squad, the Bodley Head emphatically stated that ‘THIS IS THE DAY OF THE WAR BOOK’, before adding: ‘undoubtedly the best sellers of recent months have been about the War; there is a public for them which has not yet been satisfied’.111 The boom was in full force. Adverts like this were evidently a direct response to the recent success of Journey’s End and All Quiet on the Western Front. They also reveal how publishers fuelled the ‘war books boom’ in an attempt to capitalize upon what they saw as a large but potentially fleeting market. Firms were not only promoting these books for literary or ideological reasons; the war was now commercially attractive. Wharton’s Squad was first published in the USA, but the marketing of the work in Britain gives a clear indication of the tone that British publishers sought to promote. The advert describes the novel as a ‘realistic and terrible account of war relieved at times with grim humour’ – a far cry from the emphasis on romance that characterized earlier marketing strategies.112 Squad certainly has much in common with other disillusioned war novels, and embodies many myths that were beginning to gain currency during this period. Wharton questions the concept of heroism, for instance, when one decorated soldier suggests that any bravery he displayed was unintentional: ‘see, I got a ribbon meself, but I don’t know to this day wot I did’. Wharton is also uncompromising in his depiction of battlefield death: ‘his features stiffen. His lungs are soaked. He drowns in his own blood’.113 A British advert for Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms  – which had also first been published in the USA – similarly advanced a particular narrative of the war.114 Its publishers, Jonathan Cape, noted that the novel presents ‘such a

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picture of war as would discourage the most martial’.115 It is hard to imagine a publisher so brazenly announcing a novel’s anti-war credentials earlier in the decade. While Hemingway does not set out to condemn war altogether, he does dismantle the elevated concepts that sustained the war effort in many countries. His protagonist Frederic Henry, for instance, notes that ‘I was embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain.’116 Later in the novel, Henry loses faith in the war effort on the Italian front, where he is an ambulance driver, and deserts the army during the 1917 retreat from Caporetto. The marketing for Squad and A Farewell to Arms, therefore, was largely faithful to the content of the novels. In seeking to highlight disillusionment with the war, the industry did much to reinforce this emergent collective memory of the war. It would be wrong, however, to assume that publishers narrowed the pool of perspectives available. Although the promotion of disillusionment became increasingly commonplace, firms hoped to differentiate their products from an ever-growing number of competitors. Books such as Hemingway’s, which offered perspectives from foreign nationalities and departed from the typical Western Front narrative, were welcomed and promoted accordingly. Jonathan Cape, for example, was sure to emphasize that A Farewell to Arms was ‘THE FIRST WAR BOOK OF THE ITALIAN FRONT’.117 Trends in dust jacket design also increasingly began to reinforce disillusionment with the war. Just as Putnam had redesigned the jacket for the second edition of All Quiet on the Western Front, a substantial shift in tone is evident in the evolution of the jacket design for Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire. This French novel was first published in the UK in 1917 by J. M. Dent, and conveyed a stark anti-war message that influenced the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon118 and Wilfred Owen.119 The dust jacket for the original British edition alludes to the peril of battle (Figure 1.6), but is reminiscent of a traditional adventure story. In 1929, during the height of the ‘war books boom’, Dent published Under Fire in Britain again, in a combined edition with its sequel, Light (1919). The jacket for this combined edition drew on Vorticist forms and signified a considerable departure (Figure 1.7). Rather than depicting soldiers engaged in the heat of battle, its silhouette of a man in a despairing posture struck a distinctly disenchanted note. Although jackets usually complemented the themes of the novels they covered, this was not always the case. Lise Jaillant’s study of Hodder and Stoughton’s marketing of Sapper’s work has shown how the dust jacket for a 1930 edition of the author’s war stories employed symbols of the tragedy of war, whereas older jackets had depicted smiling soldiers. The new cover also conflicted somewhat with Sapper’s new introduction to the work, which explicitly criticized the

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Figure  1.6 Dust jacket design for the first edition of Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire (J. M. Dent, 1917). Courtesy of the Orion Publishing Group.

growing disillusionment in books such as All Quiet on the Western Front.120 This concerted effort by a publisher to reposition an older work in order to appeal to public sentiment further illustrates the commercial force of disillusionment. Distinctly morbid designs also began to appear as publishers sought to cast the war in a negative light. The design for the first edition of Manning’s Her Privates We had a gothic flavour, much like the second edition of All Quiet on

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Figure 1.7 Romney Towndrow’s dust jacket design for Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire/ Light (J. M. Dent, 1929). Courtesy of the Orion Publishing Group.

the Western Front. Printed directly onto the book’s cloth-bound cover (the jacket itself was transparent), the design’s depiction of the Grim Reaper hanging from a soldier’s shoulder sent an unequivocal message to the reader (Figure  1.8). Due to its profane language, Piazza Press initially published Manning’s novel privately, and anonymously, in London in November 1929, under the title The Middle Parts of Fortune. An expurgated version, attributed to Private 19022 – Manning’s rank and number during the war – was published in January 1930 by Peter Davies Ltd. Drawing on Manning’s own experiences on the Somme in 1916, the novel vividly conveys the hardships of the trenches, and harbours

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Figure 1.8 Front cover design for the first edition of Frederic Manning’s Her Privates We (Peter Davies, 1929).

no illusions about war’s ‘beastliness’. While Manning did of course survive the war, his protagonist, Bourne, is killed in its final section. But the book perhaps provides a more balanced portrayal than its original cover suggests. Through his focus on a broad range of characters in the ranks, and written from the ranks, Manning gives equal voice to a variety of perspectives. While the pessimistic private, Shem, embodies the narratives of passive victimhood and disillusionment by resigning himself to death, the indignant Martlow is more martial: ‘I’d rather kill some other fucker first’. And Manning certainly highlights the value of comradeship, observing ‘how closely men were bound together, by some impalpable

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tie’.121 Nevertheless, the novel’s stark realism allied it more closely with works such as All Quiet on the Western Front, than with the more consoling middlebrow works of the early 1920s. The book’s striking cover was not its only selling point. Realizing that Manning’s depiction of the private soldier’s experience set the novel apart from the typical subaltern’s representation of war, Peter Davies attempted to differentiate the novel, announcing in an advert that ‘here at last is a brilliant war book written by a British private soldier’.122 Manning himself was impressed by these marketing efforts, claiming that Davies was ‘adept’ at publicity.123 Davies, however, was not simply attempting to capitalize on the success of works like All Quiet on the Western Front. He had actually been encouraging Manning to write the novel since the early 1920s, prior to the huge success of similar works.124 Davies himself was a veteran of the Somme, and a Military Cross winner,125 and he could evidently relate to Manning’s story. His foresight here is also a further example of the intelligent anticipation of the boom that Geoffrey Faber would identify. Davies, in fact, was crucial in bringing the work to fruition. Manning himself had required some convincing, and may not have written the work without Davies’ encouragement: it was only following the great success of All Quiet on the Western Front that he agreed to do so. Davies was also well aware that the boom would soon pass. He consequently invited Manning to his flat in London and urged him to write, ensuring that he was free from distractions.126 This tactic was a success: Her Privates We had sold 15,000 copies by April 1930, and 30,000 by autumn 1931.127

The divided marketplace A belief in the futility and disillusionment of the war was far from fixed, however. Although a change in publishing trends is detectable, readers did not unanimously embrace these narratives. Despite the success of All Quiet on the Western Front, publishers also sensed that a large market still existed for more ideologically conservative representations. The challenge for the most commercially minded publishers was trying to feed and appease both markets, as this 1930 extract from the Publisher and Bookseller suggests: The necessity arises of trying to please two distinct bodies of the reading public . . . For while one of these bodies prefers the story of the war to be more or less idealised – sentimentalized if you will – the other approves of the most

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horrifying, repellent and most sordid details . . . It may be suggested that the publisher’s obvious recourse . . . is to furnish his list with works of both kinds . . . Unfortunately it is not quite as easy as that; for the books of which either section disapproves are apt to be violently denounced.128

This appetite for war books does not appear to have been simply a matter of taste; the representation of the war was evidently an emotively charged, politically contested issue, and publishers were central to the debate. Through their choice of books, and through their marketing strategies, publishers had the power to both resist and reinforce myths – some, to maximize their profit, may have done both. This split in the marketplace helps to explain why some publishers did not adopt a firm position on the war. While Jonathan Cape had chosen to emphasize Hemingway’s anti-war credentials, the firm took a different approach when promoting Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That, published in September 1929. The dust jacket, for instance, only subtly alluded to the war. The front featured a photograph of the author, and an image of an avant-garde mechanical sculpture designed especially for the occasion by the artist Len Lye (Figure 1.9). The back of the jacket did include photographs of trench paraphernalia, including a map and some matches, but avoided firm symbols of the horror of war (Figure 1.10). Graves had insisted upon this jacket design, despite Cape’s protestations.129 The blurb also did little to capitalize on the ‘war books boom’. It commented that Graves had been ‘an infantry captain in France, a shop-keeper, a university professor in Egypt, a printer; and is the author of thirty-three books or pamphlets’.130 Graves’s First World War service, which accounts for nearly half of the book, is therefore mentioned only in passing alongside his other occupations. Nowhere is his perspective on the war considered. Graves himself may have been responsible for this blurb, but had Jonathan Cape been keen to accentuate the book’s war themes he would surely have edited the blurb accordingly. Cape’s advertising for Good-bye to All That also avoided the contentious facets of the war’s memory, and appealed to the public’s interest in celebrity, stating that it ‘gives names, without any attempt to disguise, of the many famous men with whom he came in contact’.131 This evasion of politically sensitive issues was an understandable attempt to appeal as widely as possible to those on both sides of the divided marketplace. Graves’s account lends itself well to this strategy; as an autobiography, the book is not solely about the war, and Graves’s position regarding the conflict is ambiguous. Good-bye to All That certainly embodies many of the now identified myths of the war: a lack of faith in abstract ideals;

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Figure  1.9 Len Lye’s design for the front of the dust jacket for the first edition of Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That (Jonathan Cape, 1929). Courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation and the Govett Brewster Art Gallery.

alienation from civilians; uncompromising depictions of injury; contempt for higher command; and a scepticism regarding the purpose of the war. And yet Graves also expresses a great pride in his regiment in Good-bye to All That.132 He would also stress elsewhere that he had not intended to write an anti-war book.133 Cape could therefore adopt an ambiguous stance, and this approach was

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Figure  1.10 Len Lye’s design for the back of the dust jacket for the first edition of Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That (Jonathan Cape, 1929). Courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation and the Govett Brewster Art Gallery.

an undisputed success: Good-bye to All That proved immensely popular, selling 20,000 copies in its first week.134 The continued publishing of more positive interpretations also reflects the conflicted sentiments of the reading public. Just as there had been a surge in disillusioned war book publishing, so too was there a reaction against this trend. One such example is Charles MacArthur’s War Bugs (1929), an American memoir

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that celebrated the heroism and fighting spirit of the men in the 42nd ‘Rainbow’ division of the US army. F. N. Doubleday first published the book in the USA, with Hutchinson publishing the British imprint of the work. The dust jacket for the British edition depicted smiling soldiers, and the typeface, despite its bright red lettering, had a jovial quality suggestive of a boys’ adventure comic. Like many other publishers, Hutchinson differentiated the book from its competitors, stressing that this was ‘the American version!’ of the war (Figure 1.11). The blurb reinforced the message of the jacket design, claiming that the ‘late war belonged to the

Figure 1.11 Dust jacket design for Charles MacArthur’s War Bugs (Hutchinson, 1929).

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privates, the boisterous hardened rankers, recruited from anywhere and everywhere, who . . . never knew when they were beaten’. The image here of the plucky and stoical private is in keeping with the idealized figure of the British Tommy, for whom authors such as Frankau expressed their admiration. While the blurb acknowledged some of the hardships depicted in the book, such as the ‘marching on roads with mud splashing in geysers shot up by the German shells’, it was faithful to MacArthur’s message, by stressing that ‘these men grumbled, laughed and cursed their way to peace’.135 The American private is therefore depicted as a tough and resilient soldier, rather than as a downtrodden victim. In short, the book conveyed, and was promoted as, the perfect antidote to accounts of horror and disillusionment. The writing of texts like this in the USA demonstrates that, as in Britain, a range of perspectives on the war was expressed across the Atlantic. Despite the dominance of disillusioned works within the canon of American First World War literature – including novels such as John Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers (1921) and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms – the American memory of the war was, as Steven Trout has argued, ‘fractured and unsettled’ during the interwar years.136 Other books in a similar vein to War Bugs were published and promoted during the ‘war books boom’. In 1929, for example, Faber published Mary Conger Vanamee’s biography, Vanamee  – a work that is now all but forgotten.137 The book relates the life of Mary Vanamee’s husband, Parker Vanamee, an American pastor killed in October 1918 while serving as an infantry officer on the Western Front. The latter portion of the book is constructed from Parker’s letters to his wife while he was serving in France, and expresses the lieutenant’s unfaltering optimism and enjoyment of war. No doubt Parker glossed over many of the more gruesome details of his service in order not to worry his wife, but the letters reflect an undeniable enthusiasm, even when describing perilous events: ‘Fritz . . . was sending across 5.9s, which are about his best shells. It really was lots of fun to hear them fully fifteen to thirty seconds before they struck . . . It sure was a wonderful trip and lots and lots of fun.’138 Extracts such as these are certainly far removed from the carnage and disillusion of All Quiet on the Western Front, and demonstrate that not all works of the ‘war books boom’ had begun to embrace a negative memory of the war. Nevertheless, Vanamee is not a polemic; nowhere does Mary Vanamee’s narrative set out to counter explicitly the disillusioned war books. The biography reads as a celebration of Parker’s life, rather than a treatise on the meaning of the war. Rather, it was Faber who positioned the work at the centre of contemporary debates, marketing the work as a welcome alternative to recent war books. The

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header of an advertisement for the book described it as ‘A War Book That Does Not Repel’, before stating that ‘there has been a surfeit of war books recently . . . their motif the filth and demoralisation of war. Into this turgid flood “Vanamee” comes like a stream of clean, clear cooling water’.139 Despite their success, books like Remarque’s had also courted considerable controversy,140 and Faber appears to have taken this into account, realizing that a market for alternative representations still existed. This is not to say the firm was committed to countering the growing myths of disillusionment; their list suggests that they promoted a conflicting blend of perspectives. Faber was also responsible for publishing Sassoon’s memoirs, for example, which although not as brutal as All Quiet on the Western Front, still reflected pessimistically on the meaning and validity of the conflict. Faber, therefore, appears to have been driven more by profit than ideological motives with regard to war books, unlike, say, Chatto & Windus, which had committed itself to disenchanted literature earlier in the decade. Publishers did not always have a specific agenda regarding the war’s memory, despite playing an important role in constructing it. Ultimately, the marketing of Vanamee illustrates the pivotal significance of All Quiet on the Western Front. Faber’s positioning of the book in opposition to Remarque’s novel demonstrates that the latter’s influence was inescapable. Indeed, eager but less enterprising publishers commissioned works of dubious merit, including spoofs like Not So Quiet on the Western Front (1930) by the pseudonymous Erica Remarks. Consequently, in their advertisement for Helen Zenna Smith’s Not So Quiet . . . Stepdaughters of War, Albert E. Marriott Ltd. felt the need to emphasize the fact that the book was ‘not a skit on ALL QUIET . . . It is an honest, unsentimental, savage record of a girl ambulance driver in France. It will sell not because it is a war book but because it is a marvellous piece of realistic writing’.141 Helen Zenna Smith was in fact the pseudonym of the popular author Evadne Price, who had based the book on the diaries of Winifred Constance Young, a woman who had served as an ambulance driver during the war. Born in 1896, Price had worked as an actor before becoming a journalist in 1918, but her own war experience appears to have been limited to working briefly as a civil servant in the Air Ministry.142 Albert Marriott had initially suggested that she write a spoof on All Quiet on the Western Front, but Price insisted on writing a more serious account.143 While the completed work mirrored many elements of Remarque’s novel, including his prose style and a cast of equivalent, albeit female characters, Price produced a sophisticated narrative that also discussed the war’s effect on gender roles.144 The book’s title was evidently an attempt to capitalize on Remarque’s success, but acknowledging the market for

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alternative perspectives, and aware of spoofs, Marriott’s advert sought to differentiate the product by highlighting the author’s gender. Marriott also suggested that the book is not simply a commercial prospect because it falls into the fashionable war book genre, but because it is of genuine literary merit. Brentano’s – an American publisher with a London office – had taken a similar approach a few months earlier with its marketing for Georg Grabenhorst’s novel Zero Hour (1929), emphasizing that it was ‘different to the other German war books’.145 Striking a balance was important, however; the ‘war books boom’ was in full force throughout 1930, and it paid to promote works within this genre. Marriott’s advertisement for Smith’s novel the following month therefore changed tack and avoided differentiating the work. Rather, the advert appealed to the commercial instincts of the industry. In addition to highlighting the popularity of the book, Marriott claimed that ‘booksellers know too, from the success of war books in the past months, that it pays to stock these books’.146 The memoir was now presented as a commercial prospect because it was a war book. These contrasting strategies illustrate how commercial drivers could shape the memory of the war in varying ways. On the one hand, the success of Remarque led to the publication and promotion of books deemed to be realistic, graphic and disillusioned, often to the exclusion of alternative narratives. But in the need to differentiate their products amidst a glut of similar commodities, publishers also strove to identify and promote alternative perspectives on the war. Further evidence that publishers welcomed a diversity of perspectives is provided by their attempts to collate the writings of a wide array of authors. Great Short Stories of the War (1930), an omnibus published by Eyre & Spottiswoode, and edited by H. C. Minchin, was one of the first examples of its kind.147 Eyre & Spottiswoode had formed in 1812, and had primarily operated as a printing firm, despite some forays into publishing. In the late 1920s, however, it began to expand its publishing activities, particularly after Douglas Jerrold – a staunchly conservative author, military historian and war veteran  – became a director and managing editor in 1928.148 Jerrold, as we shall see in the following chapter, was a vocal critic of disillusioned war literature, but he does not appear to have exerted a great influence over Minchin’s selections in Great Short Stories of the War. Ann-Marie Einhaus has argued that there is an ‘emphasis on futility’ in this collection, and stories of this persuasion certainly dominate.149 However, the collection’s selection of writers is intentionally diverse, and Minchin attempts to transcend the polarized debates over the war’s meaning by recognizing the protean nature of its experience. Consequently, authors from England, America, France and Germany are included, and the stories are divided up, according

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to their subject matter, into the following sections: ‘The Home Front’, ‘Behind the Front Line’, ‘In the Front Line’, ‘Battle, Raid, and Patrol’, ‘The Lighter Side of War’, ‘Strange Stories’, ‘Soldiers on Leave’, ‘In the Air’, ‘At Sea’, ‘Satires of Circumstance’, ‘In Hospital’ and ‘After the War’. Within this, Sapper’s work sits alongside more pessimistic extracts from Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Aldington’s Death of a Hero. Other famous authors, including Conrad, Galsworthy and Hemingway, are represented. Female writers are significantly under-represented, however, with Edith Wharton the only exception; male writers continued to monopolize the war’s memory. Nevertheless, the collection attempts to encompass the totality of the conflict, with recognition of both combatant and non-combatant experience, and the various arenas of the war. By highlighting ‘the lighter side of war’, the book also avoided presenting the conflict in purely negative terms. The introduction to the edition, written by Edmund Blunden, neither condemns nor promotes the war. While Blunden confesses that war seems to have little meaning, acknowledging its ‘paradoxing and googlies’, he also shows an awareness of the distortive influence of hindsight, noting the value of the stories: ‘one may point to them in these late days, when war seems merely damnable nonsense, for explanations of the spirit in which the war was sustained by the various countries who held the line’.150 Disillusionment may have been in vogue, but it was important to remember why many soldiers had been motivated to fight in the first place. Great Short Stories of the War commanded a double-page advert in the Publisher and Bookseller in May 1930, in which Eyre & Spottiswoode noted that ‘the merits of even the most popular war novels have been hotly disputed, but it is certain that the GREAT SHORT STORIES OF THE WAR, written without sentimentality or self-pity, but dramatizing war’s unforgettable moments, heroic, humorous, tragic or merely disastrous, will remain as permanent contributions to our literature’. They go on to boast that the collection is ‘the most representative, the most authoritative and most historical of war books’.151 Eyre & Spottiswoode therefore present the book as a deliberate attempt to broaden collective understandings of the war, moving beyond national boundaries towards a more inclusive and varied representation of the conflict. By recognizing both the positives and negatives of war experience, and collecting disparate views, they imply that the book transcends previous debates, reaching a more complete, and hence ‘truthful’ portrayal of war. Promoting this variety, of course, is also a hopeful attempt to maximize sales by appealing to as broad a section of the divided marketplace

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as possible. The first print-run of the book was considerable, consisting of 10,000 copies, in addition to another 250 signed by Blunden.152 It is likely that the majority of these sold to the public, for Harper and Brothers published an American version of the book in 1931.153

Conclusion The publishing industry played an integral role in shaping the memory of the First World War throughout the 1920s. The initial ‘imaginative silence’ regarding the war was at least partially imposed by publishers, and this notion has gained currency because publishers often concealed war themes when marketing books shortly after the conflict. As the decade progressed, keener publishers, driven as much by literary or ideological agendas as they were by profit, tested the market with more challenging literature, and this in turn paved the way for the huge success of disillusioned works during the ‘war books boom’. Publishers were now drawn to disillusioned literature for commercial reasons as the boom took hold, and helped to construct and reinforce this negative narrative of the war through their promotional techniques. The segmentation of the marketplace, however, ensured that more positive, affirming works continued to be published, and this helps to explain why the memory of the war remained contested during the interwar years. This analysis of publishing trends, however, offers only a partial explanation. Publishers were of course seeking to construct, feed and appease the tastes of readers. These readers are the focus of the following chapter.

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‘The Bloodless War’: Reception and Controversy during the Interwar Years

Writing in 1930, in a literary appraisal of the 1920s, A. C. Ward claimed that the ‘affair of the war books was the culminating episode in that Bloodless War between Contents and Not-Contents which divided the post-War generation into two camps’.1 Ward was referring to the ‘war books controversy’ of 1929 and 1930. This was a fierce public debate, sparked by the publishing boom, which concerned not only the value of recent war books, but also the value of the First World War itself. The flurry of publishing activity that marked the ‘war books boom’ was met by a congruent flurry in reviewing. Literary critics, often authors themselves, disagreed over whether a book’s depiction of the war was accurate, valid or useful, while the pages of newspapers and literary journals became battlegrounds over which the memory of the war was disputed. Broadly, as Ward suggests, opinion was split between the ‘Contents’ – those who ascribed meaning and value to the war, and the ‘Not-Contents’ – those who critiqued the war and were sympathetic to the myths of relentless horror and futility that characterized many popular works of the boom. Despite acknowledging debate over the war’s meaning, a succession of scholars have argued that the mythology of the war was fixed during the interwar years; in short, they imply that the ‘Not-Contents’ prevailed.2 Janet Watson, in an otherwise insightful analysis of the critical conflict at the heart of the controversy, suggests that by the mid-1930s there was a widespread acceptance of disillusionment.3 Though scholars have correctly begun to revise this assumption by pointing to the broad range of perspectives expressed in literature throughout the interwar years,4 there has been little appreciation of how different readerships fragmented the memory of the war. This chapter examines the reception of First World War literature during the 1920s and 1930s, with a particular focus on responses to works during the ‘war

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books controversy’. During this period the developing myths of the Great War were most fiercely debated, particularly among authors and literary critics. In addition to these critical debates, however, I also discuss the responses of the wider public, an aspect of the contemporary scene that has been largely ignored by other scholars. Finally, this chapter pays attention to cinematic adaptations of war literature. A boom in war cinema accompanied the ‘war books boom’, and these films also illustrate how narratives of the war were interpreted, disseminated and received.

Post-war pessimism? To what extent did the political, social and economic climate at the end of the 1920s foster a popular market for disillusioned war literature? As the historian Martin Pugh has noted, ‘behind the gaiety, exuberance and irresponsibility of post-war social life lurked an undercurrent of pessimism’.5 The war had claimed 722,000 British lives, with another half a million men disabled, many of whom would die from war-related injuries. The conflict’s mental scars were also undeniable, with 65,000 veterans receiving pensions for nervous complaints in 1921.6 These sources of bitterness were compounded by the economic downturn that followed the war. Mass unemployment hit Britain in 1920, reaching eleven per cent in 1921 and leaving many returning soldiers out of work.7 Most of the women who had worked in factories during the war were forced to vacate their positions, and also found themselves unemployed.8 Four years of war had not resulted in a more stable or prosperous environment for Britons. And yet, despite these understandable sources of discontent, it was not until the late 1920s that the flood of disillusioned war books hit the market. Samuel Hynes therefore argues that the General Strike of 1926 was a key turning point, as it recreated the tense mood and dislocations of wartime.9 The eventual defeat of the trade unions fostered dissatisfaction among the working classes, many of whom were veterans encouraged to reflect on their wartime experiences with a renewed resentment. The 1929 success of Ramsey MacDonald’s Labour party, led by a number of wartime pacifists, suggested that the public mood had turned against the war.10 The onset of the Great Depression was also significant:  its more severe economic consequences led to a large rise in unemployment, which reached fifteen per cent by the mid-1930s,11 and certainly dashed any hopes that the post-war world might be more prosperous. These economic factors were accompanied by changing attitudes to Germany. The antipathy towards the Germans which had been commonplace during the

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war – and persisted in the immediate post-war years – began to fade, and was often superseded by a traditional distrust of the French.12 British foreign policy reflected these attitudes during the interwar years. Britain had always been reluctant to ally with France, and after the First World War many began to blame the outbreak of the conflict on Britain’s commitment to the French, which was felt to have prevented better relations with Germany. Consequently, British politicians avoided strengthening ties with France and looked to improve relations with the Weimar Republic during the 1920s.13 The extent to which these diplomatic developments influenced popular attitudes is debatable, but the great success of Arnold Zweig’s and Erich Maria Remarque’s novels during the ‘war books boom’ is certainly indicative of a diminished antipathy towards Germany. These reasons for disillusionment, however, should not be overstated. The Great Depression, for example, did not take full effect until after the ‘war books boom’, and by the time of the Wall Street Crash in October 1929, numerous successful war books had already been published. Harsh economic circumstances, moreover, did not necessarily encourage people to renounce the war. Although the economic legacy of the conflict exacerbated the severity of the depression, it did not cause the stock market crash, which had its roots in the US financial markets.14 We should also question the severity of the Depression’s impact on interwar Britain. Recent research has stressed that its effects were not as damaging as they were in the United States, and that although many producers suffered, consumers actually benefitted from low prices.15 Publishing, in fact, does not appear to have been severely damaged by the depression:  1930 was, until then, the most productive year for the industry.16 The British Empire reached its apogee during the interwar years, and colonial markets such as India and Australia proved profitable for publishers.17 This might explain why so many war books were bought, but it is an unlikely source of disillusionment with the war. Finally, while attitudes may have been more accepting of German literature, Britain remained a patriotic and largely insular society.18 Not all British readers would have sympathized with the German war experience. A variety of perspectives on the war were still possible.

Early critical responses during the ‘war books boom’ The works that triggered the boom in 1928 did not initially spark any great controversy, and there was little forewarning of an impending backlash. Journey’s End, first performed in December 1928, received some criticism on artistic

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grounds, but commentators did not question its fidelity to the war experience. Though The Times mistakenly described it as ‘a work of art without any prospect of endurance’, its reviewer praised the play for coming ‘as near as the stage may ever come to precise representation of life in a dugout’.19 Similarly, the Daily Mirror conceded that ‘it is not a great piece of dramatic literature’, but praised its ‘unemotional realism’.20 These responses are not surprising; Journey’s End was not strictly an anti-war work, despite its tragic plot, and it provided a palatable picture of life in the trenches. Initially, critics also welcomed the more vitriolic All Quiet on the Western Front.21 The Manchester Guardian felt the book ‘communicated the direct, immediate experience of the war itself ’, claiming it to be ‘surely the greatest of all war books’.22 Remarque’s vivid present tense narration no doubt fostered this sense of immediacy and realism. The pacifist Herbert Read, writing in T. S. Eliot’s literary journal, The Criterion, was also effusive in his praise for Remarque: ‘his book is alone. It makes all the other war books seem unnecessary . . . It is the greatest war book . . . because it is the simplest, the starkest and yet the most beautiful . . . it is the truth’.23 In such reviews, the emergence of a myth of war experience, centred on a universal ‘truth’, is apparent. The idea that a single narrative can speak for an entire generation, regardless of the side on which they fought, and indeed where they fought, is indicative of a nascent myth which emphasized the commonality between all soldiers and prioritized the Western Front as the representative experience. Such a narrative does, of course, obscure the range of experiences and interpretations that the war entailed. More conservative publications also praised the work at this stage. St. John Ervine, writing in the Daily Express, noted its ‘quality’,24 and even Cyril Falls, who would later become a vocal critic of similar war books, conceded in the TLS that the novel was ‘very good’. Falls, however, interprets the novel within a heroic framework. In the character of Katczinsky, for instance, he sees the ‘ideal soldier – brave, steady, crafty, never excited but never off his guard’.25 The novel is palatable for Falls, therefore, not because he sympathizes with the novel’s stance on the war, but because, in his eyes, soldierly qualities are still valued in the book. This is an unusual reading: Remarque’s characters are largely pitiful victims, but it underlines the potential disparities between authorial intent and critical reception. Reviewers often approached the same works with divergent values. In Falls’s review, there are also strands of measured criticism that critics would articulate with greater vehemence within a year. This in part stemmed from perceived differences in national character. Falls warned that ‘the English

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reader must be prepared for what he may dub coarseness or frankness . . . of a type that he will not find in English novels. We do not mean merely insistence on the realities of war – for a War novel would not be of much value without that – but a constant preoccupation with bodily functions’. Falls did not deem the horrors of war to be offensive, but rather the sexual endeavours and toilet habits of Remarque’s characters. For Falls, the book’s ‘Germanic’ qualities were more a threat to English standards of morality, than to the English narrative of the war. But after highlighting these contrasts, Falls made a more profound point about the English and German war experience: We have had grim English war novels, in which the wine of victory is represented as tasting bitter enough: but it is doubtful if we shall ever have one with a note so hopeless as that of the concluding chapter here. That wine may have tasted bitter, but it could not have tasted so bitter as this vinegar of defeat.26

Unlike critics such as Read, who emphasized the universality of Remarque’s novel, Falls distinguishes between victor and vanquished. Remarque’s disillusionment is dismissed as a product of the German defeat, and an edifying British narrative of the war therefore remains intact. The Daily Mirror expressed similar sentiments in its review of Remarque’s book: ‘others will find it lacking in something of the finer spirit which was translated into victory on one side and the fortitude of defeat on the other’. For many Britons, a German novel could not be assimilated into a British narrative centred on victory and heroism. As with Falls, however, the Daily Mirror was more even-handed than later war book critics, arguing that to ‘reject it for its brutality or for its grossness . . . is to confess that one knows nothing of war in general’.27 Critics agreed, therefore, that the war had certainly been horrific: uncompromising battlefield images themselves were not unreasonable. Less palatable, however, were representations that ignored the qualities of the British character and the ultimate allied victory. All Quiet on the Western Front could be excused for being German, but it would not suffice as a ‘true’ representation of the British war experience. By the middle of 1929, many of the disillusioned war books continued to receive widespread praise. Critics were receptive to depictions of the war which emphasized its horrors vividly, and the romanticizing, glorifying tendencies that had characterized earlier works were no longer expected. Arnold Bennett, writing in the Evening Standard, summarized the views of many critics in his review of Good-bye to All That when he said, ‘I should not call it a pleasant book, and

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I have no desire that it should be pleasant’.28 Similarly, Orlo Williams, reviewing A Farewell to Arms in the TLS noted Hemingway’s ‘unrationalized pessimism’, but felt the book had ‘a complete note of authenticity’.29

Wilfred Owen and the canon Efforts by critics to formulate a canon of war prose by the end of 1929 also reflect the growing acceptance of disillusionment. W. R. Inge, writing in the Evening Standard in October 1929, picked H.  G. Wells’s Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1917), Blunden’s Undertones of War, Aldington’s Death of a Hero and Sherriff ’s Journey’s End as exemplars of the British response to the war, and Zweig’s The Case of Sergeant Grischa and Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front as the best of the German books.30 It would be wrong to deem all these authors ‘antiwar’ – Wells and Sherriff certainly were not – but there is a definite preference here towards works which moved beyond the consoling sentiments of middlebrow literature. Inge’s appraisal of poetry, however, creates a rather different impression. Although he praises Sassoon ‘for some strong and bitter verses in the interest of truth’, he also lauds Brooke for his ‘lofty patriotism’ and Julian Grenfell for his poem ‘Into Battle’.31 The latter two poets typify the romanticized response to war, and are a far cry from the pity and horror of Wilfred Owen, who is conspicuous by his absence. Owen’s popularity at this stage is debatable, and a number of historians have suggested that his poetry was largely unknown during this period.32 Owen of course was killed in action in November 1918, a week before the armistice, and by this stage only five of his poems had been published. The first volume of his poetry, edited by Siegfried Sassoon and Edith Sitwell, and published in 1921, did not reach a large audience: the first impression consisted of 730 copies, and the second – still not fully bound by 1929 – of only 700. By contrast, Brooke’s Collected Poems had sold 300,000 copies by 1930.33 Nevertheless, Owen began to gain significant recognition before the ‘war books boom’, and, despite its small print run, the first edition of his poetry was well received. The Manchester Guardian, for example, described Owen’s poems as ‘enough to rank him among the very few war poets whose work has more than a passing value’. The review concluded by noting presciently that ‘his work will not easily die’.34 A  review in the Sunday Times was also positive, arguing that Owen ‘has done something to secure that the war as the real soldier knew

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it shall not be hidden by the old cover of lies’.35 Here we can identify the roots of the war’s modern mythology. This reviewer identifies with Owen’s bitterness and cynicism towards the traditional values that glorified the conflict, implying that the poet’s evocation of individual suffering achieves a more ‘truthful’ representation. This sympathy with Owen’s disillusioned message is striking given that such views do not appear to have been widely disseminated until the end of the 1920s. While Owen had not yet achieved widespread appeal, critics evidently sympathized with his vision of the war. We should also not place too much emphasis on the limited print run for the first edition of Owen’s poems, for his poetry was also disseminated through a variety of other means, including an Anthology of Modern Verse (1921), edited by the publisher Algernon Methuen. This collection included a number of war poets, such as Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon, in addition to other esteemed names of the period, including John Masefield, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. Methuen included four of Owen’s poems: ‘Miners’, ‘Greater Love’, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and ‘Strange Meeting’. The latter two, in particular, powerfully evoke the pity and futility of the war, their inclusion again illustrative of the critical appreciation of Owen’s poetry. Even at this early stage, Owen was far from an obscure or unfashionable poet. The Manchester Guardian’s review of the anthology even singled out Owen’s inclusion, arguing that ‘the finest thing added is Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting” ’.36 Perhaps most significantly, the collection reached a wide audience. Within five months, five editions of the anthology had been published, with around 20,000 copies sold.37 Owen’s poetry evidently reached a wider audience in the early 1920s than has previously been suggested. Such was the growing popularity of Owen that the Manchester Guardian even complained when the poet was omitted from the anthology Poems of To-day (1922), published by Sidgwick and Jackson.38 In this critique of the work, a reviewer asked ‘how is that a book that draws “mostly from younger men who have written under the influence and reactions of the war” has left out Wilfred Owen, who by that token should have been the very first choice?’39 Owen’s rising prominence within the canon was also affirmed in the Manchester Guardian’s 1925 review of Siegfried Sassoon’s Selected Poems, which opined that ‘it is now almost beyond dispute that the two outstanding poets of the war were Wilfred Owen and Mr. Sassoon’.40 The Manchester Guardian may not have been an entirely accurate barometer of popular tastes, but these appraisals certainly dispel any notion that Wilfred Owen was only a marginal poet at this point.

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By the ‘war books boom’, the myths now associated with Owen’s poetry were also being widely disseminated in bestselling literature. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Owen’s bitter verses also began to increase in popularity. It has been rightly suggested that Edmund Blunden’s 1931 revised edition, The Poems of Wilfred Owen, was important to this trajectory,41 but again prior factors have been overlooked which helped to enhance the poet’s reputation. In 1930, Collins published an anthology of war poems, compiled by Frederick Brereton, and with an introduction by Edmund Blunden. Brereton was a prolific author, particularly known for his popular children’s novels, many of which portrayed war as a heroic adventure.42 Yet despite the inclusion of patriotic poetry from the likes of Brooke, Grenfell and Kipling, the anthology privileged scathing critiques of the war. Five of Owen’s poems, including ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Parable of the Old Men and the Young’ – two of his bitterest works – were contained within the collection, and only Sassoon, with seven poems, featured more frequently.43 Collins also listed Owen’s name among other key poets on their advertising.44 In addition to Owen and Sassoon, the collection included, among others, four poems by Richard Aldington and three by Isaac Rosenberg. The canon was beginning to take shape. Dilys Powell’s review of the anthology in the Sunday Times also identified Owen as the outstanding poet in the collection, arguing that the disillusioned poetry of Owen, Sassoon and Isaac Rosenberg – perhaps the three most notable names today – was ultimately of more value than the patriotic verses of Brooke: ‘ “the pity war distilled” – that is the element which gives the best war poetry’, claimed Powell, quoting Owen’s famous line from ‘Strange Meeting’.45 H. M. Tomlinson, a former war correspondent and author of the anti-war novel All Our Yesterdays (1930), had similarly expressed his admiration for the poem in an article for The Criterion in April 1930.46 Powell’s inclusion of Isaac Rosenberg at the pinnacle of this canon is perhaps surprising. Much of Rosenberg’s trench poetry shares the sombre tone and brutal imagery of Owen’s work, but often lacks its immediacy. Rosenberg’s working class, Jewish background also placed him on the periphery of what was largely an Anglo-Saxon, middle-class canon. Like Owen, Rosenberg had died on the Western Front in 1918 before many of his poems had been published, and his posthumous reputation similarly depended on the efforts of other influential literary figures. In 1922 Heinemann published the first collection of poems by Rosenberg, edited by Gordon Bottomley and with an introduction by Laurence Binyon. Both Bottomley and Binyon were established poets, and without their efforts, Rosenberg may have faded into obscurity. Yet Rosenberg’s appeal was initially limited. Critics were generally favourable to the collection,

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but felt that Rosenberg had been killed before he had reached his true potential as a poet.47 A new edition of Rosenberg’s poems did not appear until 1937, when Chatto & Windus published a comprehensive collection with a foreword by Siegfried Sassoon. As with Owen, therefore, it was anthologies like Brereton’s that helped to sustain Rosenberg’s reputation throughout the interwar years. Shortly after the publication of Brereton’s anthology, the BBC included Owen’s poetry in their commemorative Armistice Day radio programme in 1930. Like Brereton’s collection, the BBC’s choice of poetry reflected the emerging mythology of the war and a persistence of more traditional interpretations. While Owen, Sassoon, Graves and Aldington all featured, so too did the patriotic verses of Brooke and Grenfell, for example.48 Owen’s inclusion in this emerging, if incoherent, canon suggests that he was becoming a publicly recognizable poet before Blunden’s edition of his poetry. The radio was the major cultural medium during the interwar years – 2,178,259 radio licenses were issued in 1927, rising to 9,082,666 by 193949 – so it is likely that the Armistice Day programme reached a large and captive audience. Critics also responded favourably to Edmund Blunden’s revised edition of Owen’s poems. The Manchester Guardian, for example, reinforced Owen’s stature, describing him as ‘the greatest of war poets’,50 while Dilys Powell, writing in The Sunday Times, praised him once more.51 But Owen was not always in critical favour during the 1930s. R.  L. Megroz’s anthology, Modern English Poetry: 1882–1932 (1933),52 omitted Owen’s work and, most famously, in 1936, W. B. Yeats excluded Owen from The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, stating that ‘passive suffering is not a theme for poetry’.53 These omissions, however, were not always popular with critics. In a review of Megroz’s anthology, the BBC’s magazine The Listener suggested that there would be ‘many who will not find it easy to accept his dismissal of a poet of the achievement and influence of Wilfred Owen’.54 Three years later, The Listener was also critical of W. B. Yeats’s anthology, noting with incredulity that ‘no doubt there is some valid reason for the exclusion of Wilfred Owen from the book’.55 The author and poet Dorothy Wellesley had also urged Yeats to reconsider his decision to omit Owen,56 while an Observer review of the 1937 collection of Rosenberg’s work lamented the absence of Rosenberg and Owen in Yeats’s anthology.57 Given these criticisms, and when considered in the light of the growing praise for Owen during the interwar years, Yeats’s omission must be considered an aberration. Ian Parsons’s anthology The Progress of Poetry, also published in 1936, further illustrates this point.58 Parsons included no fewer than seven of Owen’s poems, and stressed ‘the potent influence which [Owen] exerted, and is still exerting’.59 Owen was

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perhaps not yet the pre-eminent poet of the war, but his reputation had already been secured. Gary Sheffield’s assertion that Owen’s popularity was ‘minuscule’ during the 1930s appears on this evidence to be a gross misrepresentation.60 Similarly, David Reynolds’s recent claim that Owen’s poetry ‘did not attract real attention until the 1960s’ seems somewhat wide of the mark.61 Myths of horror, disillusionment and futility were not yet predominant, but the growing appeal of Owen’s poetry suggests they held greater currency than before.

Authors, critics and controversy Despite the growing power of the war’s mythology, many authors had a contradictory and ambiguous relationship with the conflict, and we can gauge these attitudes through their responses to each other’s work. Far from a united chorus of anti-war writers, these authors were actually a disparate group of lone voices. No doubt there were similarities: none of them was pro-war, none of them harboured illusions of glory and all agreed that the horror of war needed to be communicated. But beyond this, they often disagreed on how they thought the war should be represented, and the extent to which they expressed a coherent anti-war ideology – if they did at all – varied greatly. Such disagreements provided a further barrier to the solidification of a fixed and uncontested memory of the First World War. Siegfried Sassoon, for example, reacted in varying – and often surprising – ways to the books of the boom. Though he did not reveal many of his views in public, his meticulously kept diary reveals how avidly he read these texts. Under Herbert Read’s recommendation, Sassoon read an advance copy of All Quiet on the Western Front, but despite having fiercely denounced the war himself through poetry, he felt that ‘no restraint is apparent; it is an example of how piling on the horrors fails to make a strong effect’. Sassoon did not balk at the horror of the war, but he critiqued Remarque’s approach for its lack of subtlety. Like Falls, Sassoon also expressed a national prejudice, dismissing Remarque as ‘typically Teutonic in the stress on physical functions’. Even Sassoon, who had expressed sympathy for his wartime enemy, alludes to an appropriate ‘British’ way of representing the war, distinct from the ‘German’ way. Sassoon also betrays a veiled class prejudice here – the stress on ‘physical functions’ was not befitting a ‘gentlemanly’ portrayal of war. Nevertheless, Sassoon recorded that the work ‘has the quality which belongs to war experience seen from the ranks’ – an acknowledgment, perhaps, that reflections thus far, including his own, had

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been primarily penned by junior officers. Sassoon concluded this diary entry by predicting that ‘people in England will not read it likely because they will not be able to face the disgusting details’.62 Sassoon was of course wrong, but this is not an unreasonable assumption; no book in the mould of Remarque’s novel had been published, and recent British works had been more restrained. As we shall see, Sassoon was also correct in foreseeing a backlash against Remarque’s work. If Sassoon’s critique of Remarque is surprising, then so too is his positive reaction to Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel. Originally published in Germany in 1920 under the title In Stahlgewittern, and first published in Britain in 1929 by Chatto & Windus, Jünger’s work is distinctly pro-militarist.63 Though Jünger conveys the war’s brutality, he presents it  – with bloodthirsty relish  – as an ennobling experience. Yet, despite his often contrasting attitudes, Sassoon recorded in his diary in December 1929 that he was ‘reading Jünger’s book with enjoyable stirrings of war memories . . . the war book reminded me of past endurances, in contrast to my present day life of hot-water bottle comfort and inactivity’.64 These nostalgic sentiments underscore Sassoon’s ambiguous relationship with the war, and further complicate the notion of a coherent disillusionment canon at this stage. Sassoon’s work itself was also critiqued from those who expressed similar sentiments regarding the war. Robert Graves, a close friend of Sassoon’s, and a fellow officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers during the conflict, disparaged Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man in 1928, claiming that its semi-autobiographical form cloaked important elements of the truth.65 This review, in addition to other sources of contention between the two, caused their relationship to deteriorate. By the time of the publication of Graves’s Good-bye to All That, their friendship was in tatters, and Sassoon, along with his friend Edmund Blunden, was scathing of the book. Sassoon read the work in November 1929, and recorded in his diary that he was ‘much perturbed’, because it described ‘with inaccuracies of fact’ his official statement of protest against the war in 1917.66 Sassoon would later write a heated letter to Graves, identifying numerous errors in the book, including those concerning casualty statistics. He claimed that ‘such inaccuracies are not noticeable to “the general public”, but they are significant to those who shared your experiences’.67 This conflict undercuts notions of a homogenous response to the war among the now-canonical authors. As Sassoon suggests, when narratives of the war related to personal experience, the facts were important for those concerned. As we shall see, many other veterans felt the same if the books they read did not chime with their own recollections. The diversity of personal experience provided a barrier to the emergence of a coherent narrative of the war.

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Given the disagreements between the disillusioned war writers, the backlash against war books at the end of 1929 is hardly surprising. Whereas reactions to individual books had rarely been overwhelmingly critical, the cumulative effect of the numerous books published throughout the year encouraged a more vociferous response, and by the middle of 1930 the press began to parody the trend. A poem by Reginald Arkell, published in the Daily Express, suggested that the boom had exploited the sacrifices of the dead for commercial gain: We were the puppets – we the men you knew; Replaced once more upon our several racks; Dragged from our dreams, and crucified anew, To earn some lucky author’s super-tax.68

Elsewhere, critics reacted to the saturation of the market. St. John Ervine, for example, writing in the Daily Express, entitled his weekly review article: ‘I Say There Are Too Many War Novels’ and opened with the observation that ‘nothing fails like excess’.69 But it was the character of these books that irritated Ervine the most. The article reviewed a number of war books including James Lansdale Hodson’s Grey Dawn, Red Night  – a novel which has failed to endure, largely due to lack of critical acclaim. Hodson was a popular middlebrow author at the time, and as Rosa Maria Bracco has noted, Grey Dawn, Red Night is an example of how disenchantment had begun to creep into the works of middlebrow writers during the ‘war books boom’.70 Ervine’s complaint was that Hodson ‘writes as if soldiers never enjoyed a minute of their soldiering’. A  veteran himself, Ervine argued that the ‘war was not the bout of unrelieved gloom that some of our authors wish to call it’.71 An unremitting emphasis on horror and despair, therefore, was felt to detract from the more enjoyable aspects of war experience. Ironically, Hodson’s publishers, Gollancz, had made specific efforts in the blurb to demonstrate that Grey Dawn, Red Night was a balanced portrayal of the war, and this is a reasonable claim. Many other reviewers had praised the work for offering an ‘English’ alternative to the sensationalism of Remarque.72 This was not how Ervine saw it: his reaction to Hodson’s work demonstrates that criticism was not just reserved for the now-canonical books, but was directed at a wider trend in popular literature. The prominent literary editor J. C. Squire, writing in The Observer at the end of 1929, shared similar sentiments, dismissing All Quiet on the Western Front as ‘the sort of war book which everybody will be ashamed of having admired a year or two hence’. He also reacted to a ‘type’ of book: ‘they are humourless, they are frequently sadistic . . . and most of them are not immune from the spirit of

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deliberate sensationalism’. Squire’s review responded to the aggregate effect of books depicting the war’s brutality in uncompromising detail. Squire does not deny the horror of war; he agrees that the greatest novel of the war would have to include ‘men on the wire crying for their mothers’, but his ideal war book would also ‘show the spirit behind the conflict, the blessed intervals of repose, the comradeship, the things which kept men going’.73 It was a balanced representation that these critics advocated; the war may have been horrific, but it had been redeemed by comradely spirit. Such resistance was a further barrier to a myth of relentless horror gaining hegemony. Two books published in 1930 furthered the backlash against disillusionment:  Cyril Falls’s measured War Books and Douglas Jerrold’s more strident pamphlet, The Lie about the War. Falls was a war veteran himself, and a regular contributor to the TLS. War Books provided a thorough bibliography of literature pertaining to the war, and included fiction, memoirs and conventional histories. Under each entry Falls gave a brief review, using a star system to rate the better books: one star being good, two meaning excellent and three denoting a work of ‘superlative merit’. The best barometer of Falls’s attitude, however, was the preface to the book, in which he articulated his dissatisfaction with recent war book trends. Like many other critics, Falls resented the exaggeration of the war’s horror: ‘every sector becomes a bad one, every working party is shot to pieces; if a man is killed or wounded his brains and entrails always protrude from his body; no one ever seems to have a rest’. While Falls acknowledges that the war ‘was a ghastly experience’, he also stresses that it was not futile, arguing that ‘to pretend that no good came out of the war is, frankly, an absurdity’.74 If a growing consensus was emerging regarding the horrific nature of war, critics still disagreed over the frequency and extent of this horror. And more significantly, they disputed the meaning of the war. A myth of futility, expounded by the likes of Owen and Remarque, was met with sharp resistance by some critics. Falls’s reviews, however, are not always predictable. Unsurprisingly, he praises Frankau’s Peter Jackson, awarding it two stars, but he also rates All Quiet on the Western Front as ‘good’, awarding it one star. Falls was evidently willing to acknowledge the literary strengths of certain works, even if he disagreed with how they portrayed the war. Similarly, he awards Good-bye to All That one star, arguing that Graves’s ‘war scenes have justly been claimed to be excellent’. In other respects, though, Falls was less impressed:  ‘his attitude . . . leaves a disagreeable impression’. Graves’s literary skill was commendable, but his disillusioned, ironic tone was not – this threatened to invalidate the meaning of the war altogether. Despite this balanced approach, Falls denigrated other successful war

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books. He disregarded Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, for example, describing it as ‘quite impossible to finish’. Hemingway’s depiction of a disenchanted American ambulance driver on the Italian front evidently failed to fit Falls’s ideal narrative of the British Western Front experience. Conversely, Falls was most impressed with Blunden’s Undertones of War and Manning’s Her Privates We, awarding both three stars.75 Critics now often place these works alongside All Quiet on the Western Front when discussing the mythology of the war,76 but both exhibit a restraint and detachment absent from Remarque’s novel. Despite their portrayal of the horror of the conflict, both books depict the stoicism and endurance of the English troops. Unlike foreign books or more despairing English works, they were therefore compatible with a British narrative of the war which, while admitting its horror, still valued its conduct and outcome. This made them more palatable for critics like Falls. Jerrold’s critical pamphlet The Lie about the War was less accommodating. Jerrold, as we have seen, was a director at the publishing house Eyre & Spottiswoode, an author of military histories of the conflict and – like Falls – a veteran of the Great War. He agreed that the war ‘was a great tragedy’ but argued that ‘neither in its origins, its actions or its results were there any elements fundamentally accidental or ultimately without meaning’. Like Falls, Jerrold was concerned by the emerging myth of futility, although he tackles this narrative more rigorously: ‘these books all reflect . . . the illusion that the war was avoidable and futile, and most of them reflect the illusion that it was recognised as futile by those who fought in it’.77 This second point is particularly significant. Jerrold not only suggests that the myth of futility is an unfair assumption in hindsight; he also argues that these attitudes were not commonplace during the war, attacking the books on the terms most cherished by many publishers, authors and readers – realism. Central to Jerrold’s argument is his recognition of the dichotomy between the personal and collective representation of war. Jerrold argues that because all the authors he considers ‘write from the standpoint of the individual’, the military significance of actions is not appreciated: ‘by . . . omitting from the book the relationship of the part to the whole, the writers of these books make every incident and every tragedy seem futile, purposeless and insignificant’.78 Military historians advance the same arguments today.79 To be sure, the canonical accounts Jerrold has in mind here are written from a personal, limited perspective, and this neglects wider political and military concerns. But most of these writers had no intention of writing a broader history of the war, nor could they if they were intending to recreate their thoughts and feelings at the time. Many authors, such

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as Sassoon and Ford, captured this sense of confusion and lack of wider perspective.80 As the literary critic Jon Stallworthy has astutely observed, ‘the view from the trench periscope is, of course, restricted – that is its limitation – but when the viewer’s life depends on what he sees, its sharp focus is its strength’.81 Just as individual narratives failed to consider political and military developments adequately, so too did accounts of grand strategy fail to convey the personal impact of war. This was what drove many writers to record their experiences. For Jerrold the war was not only worthwhile for the political ends which it achieved, but also because of the effect it had on the character of those who fought. Jerrold argued that the numerous literary depictions of men breaking under the emotional strain of war were inaccurate. Drawing on his own war experiences as a source of authority, he boasted that he had ‘only seen two men who had definitely lost all control of their nerves’. Rather, war brought out the best in men through pushing them to new levels of endurance; men survived not ‘in spite of war but precisely because it is war’.82 War was therefore a test of stoical masculinity, which the British soldier, through strength of mind and body, had passed. War books which dwelt on issues such as shell shock threatened this conception of masculinity, which was at the heart of traditional interpretations of the war. This masculine ideal had its roots in the ‘muscular Christianity’ of the Public Schools, which combined spiritual belief with an emphasis on the importance of physical prowess.83 It was also founded on a sense of patriotic obligation – as men, British soldiers had a duty to serve their country. As Jessica Meyer has argued, this ideal of the ‘soldier hero’ – alongside a more domestic form of manliness, which celebrated men as ‘providers and protectors’ – underpinned attitudes to masculinity during the era of the First World War.84 Books which questioned patriotism, or masculine duty altogether, were therefore abhorrent for Jerrold:  ‘any fool and any knave can attack patriotism. But it takes something exceptional among fools and something utterly contemptible among knaves to argue that the individual in a world at war has no obligations at all’. For these reasons Jerrold singled out Hemingway’s protagonist in A Farewell to Arms for attack: ‘a man who breaks his engagements, deserts at the height of battle, and aids and abets the desertion with him of a nurse he seduced, would on any reading not be a man’. This protagonist’s masculinity was not only questionable because he had shirked his responsibilities, but also because his war service – modelled on Hemingway’s own experiences – was not sufficiently manly: ‘when we add that this unspeakable cad is not a combatant officer but an ambulance officer whose sole duty it is to relieve suffering, there is no more to say’.85 Jerrold therefore valued a narrative of the war founded upon a particular

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construction of masculinity that privileged the stoical and dutiful British combatant. Representations which failed to fit this framework were deemed corrosive. A similar attitude no doubt helps account for Cyril Falls’s antipathy towards A Farewell to Arms in his own critique. The fire of debate was further stoked when critics and authors began to respond to the backlash against war books. H.  M. Tomlinson, for example, responded to Jerrold in The Criterion in April 1930. He argued that while critics might value unflinching endurance, decrying the horrors of war was a laudable response: ‘let us remember that it was a point of honour in Red Indians to keep a straight face, even when they were being flayed alive. Savage men endure afflictions . . . without any quickening of the intelligence’.86 Tomlinson reformulates Jerrold’s notions of manliness, founding his argument on racial rhetoric and ideals of Western progress. Whereas stoical endurance characterized ‘savage’ peoples, Tomlinson implied that a sensitive reaction to the barbarity of war was the natural reaction of the intelligent, civilized man. Conflicting constructions of masculinity and nationhood therefore provided frameworks within which the war could be understood and represented in the interwar period. The author and veteran Herbert Read also responded to the war book critics in The Criterion, challenging J. C. Squire’s dismissal of All Quiet on the Western Front. He too countered Jerrold, arguing that the war had indeed been futile. With considerable flair, he denounced Jerrold’s dispassionate position as untenable: ‘if you can honestly . . . say that that the objects achieved in this war . . . were purchased cheaply at the cost of ten million lives . . . in such circumstances your argument is unanswerable . . . do not, in any circumstances, wipe the tears from your eyes, or you will spoil the effect of your attitude’. But it was not just the human cost of the war that had invalidated it. Read also suggested that Britain’s reasons for going to war were illegitimate, and denounced the political machinations that had sparked the conflict. ‘The whole war was fought for rhetoric’, he argued – it was ‘a war “waged” by rhetoriticians, with rhetoric, for the sake of more rhetoric’. The anti-war writers therefore had a duty to expose this deception: ‘the pen is mightier than the sword, and is now being turned against the sword’.87 This article placed Read within the disillusioned school of ‘Not-Contents’ identified by A.  C. Ward in his aforementioned literary history of the 1920s. Ward himself was also embroiled in the debate, allying himself with the ‘NotContents’. He defended the individualist perspective of war, arguing that ‘for ninety per cent of those engaged, the war was a personal concern; and the peace was a personal concern’. Ward noted that for most soldiers the individual impact

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of war was all they knew, and was therefore all they could write about with any authority. He also expressed sympathy for the growing myth of futility, suggesting that unless the war has ‘increased the sum of human happiness’ it cannot be considered worthwhile. Ward stopped short of passing judgement here: ‘ten years’, he argued, ‘is too short a time to assess the value’ of the war and its legacy, but there is a detectable note of scepticism.88 Perhaps most pertinently, Ward questioned the accuracy of many of the war book critiques. He claimed that ‘there is hardly a soldier who would not approve’ of depictions of comradeship, ‘just as there is hardly a War-book which does not justify it’.89 Ward was not alone in arguing this; a columnist in the Week-end Review in May 1930 made a similar point, indicting journalists for deliberately levelling unfair criticisms in order to avoid ‘dull reviewing’.90 There is some truth to this: almost all war books depict the comradeship of the trenches, even All Quiet on the Western Front, and few depict the fighting as relentless.91 All narrate moments of rest behind the lines, though in some the action is faster paced and more gruesome than others. In fact, the boredom and monotony that typified army life were often as much a source of discontent as the brutality of battle, and numerous books would depict this too.92 In most of the more critical war book essays, moreover, the accusations are levelled at works collectively, with few concrete examples provided. In his final defence of the war books, Ward suggested ‘that if the general tenor of the War-books is as false as a minority of objectors has declared, why should they have been read so widely and with such general approval?’93

‘General approval?’ These critical responses, of course, reflect only a small fraction of the readership for war books. As particularly discerning readers, critics were not representative of the wider audience for these works. Sales figures provide one measure of public appeal, and as I have shown in the previous chapter, many of the books of the boom, particularly All Quiet on the Western Front, were successful bestsellers. These figures, however, reveal only a partial glimpse of a book’s impact due to the reliance of most readers on borrowing and subscription libraries. Far more people therefore read these bestselling war books than their sales figures suggest. All Quiet on the Western Front, for example, was under heavy demand in libraries across the country for many months after the book’s publication. Stepney Council, in east London, had purchased an unprecedented 126 copies of the

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book by January 1930, but still had a waiting list of 553 people waiting to borrow it.94 This was not an isolated phenomenon; at Barrow library in Cumbria the book was reserved for over two years.95 Despite the book’s phenomenal popularity, however, libraries did not always facilitate Remarque’s success. The controversy caused by the novel among critics was reflected in local communities, with some libraries refusing to loan the book. In Port Sunlight, Merseyside, for example, libraries banned the book, much to the dismay of local inhabitants.96 And in Rawenstall, Lancashire, the local council did the same, but was inundated with letters from the Labour-dominated trade council demanding that the book be put back into circulation.97 These incidents of banning demonstrate that an anti-war message was far from universally accepted, but the controversy that resulted from these acts, in addition to All Quiet on the Western Front’s sales figures, attests to the immense popularity of the book and the growing appeal of disillusionment. Popular war books were also disseminated through serialization in the national press. The Daily Express, for instance, serialized Remarque’s novel in September 1929.98 A popular paper during the interwar years, with a circulation that would eventually reach two million,99 the Daily Express was owned by the conservative press baron Lord Beaverbrook. The decision to serialize this work therefore suggests that Remarque’s novel had an appeal which extended beyond an intellectual or pacifist minority. Similarly, the Evening Standard, a fashionable London evening paper also owned by Beaverbrook, chose to serialize Journey’s End100 and The Case of Sergeant Grischa101 in October and November 1929, respectively. These serialized works potentially reached a large audience, and introduced a broad section of the public to the myths they expounded. Evidence of a large readership for these books does not provide any indication of how the public reacted to them, however. Although people may have bought or borrowed a war book, they may not actually have read it. And of course many newspaper readers may have chosen to ignore literary serializations. Those who did read war literature, moreover, may not necessarily have enjoyed reading it, or agreed with how it represented the war. What follows, therefore, provides a greater insight into the varying responses to war books among differing members of the public. Though evidence is limited – few readers recorded their responses to books – we can still gauge how different sections of the public reacted. The correspondence pages of newspapers, for example, often contained responses from readers – particularly veterans – keen to share their views. This trend was not just reserved for the London newspapers, but was equally reflected in the regional press.

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On Armistice Day 1929 an article in the Hull Daily Mail provided a powerful critique of All Quiet on the Western Front. The author’s name was withheld; readers were simply told that it had been written by an ‘infantry lance-corporal’. It is unclear whether the contributor was a regular journalist and contributor to the paper, but by emphasizing his rank, this author evidently intended to present himself as the voice of the ordinary soldier. Again, notions of masculinity were at stake: the author dismissed Remarque’s work as ‘the whine of an ill-fed, ill-handled conscript’, implying that a courageous volunteer was more laudable than a cowardly conscript. The article’s criticisms were also fuelled by a national prejudice against the work for being ‘a nauseous chronicle of German chivalry and culture’. But the real villains of the piece were ‘pushful publishers’ and ‘loquacious librarians’, because ‘no British author had been accorded the same publicity’. Like many critics, the author acknowledged the horror of the war, but celebrated the British war effort for its ‘exalting positive elements of brotherhood, sacrifice, gallantry, endurance, enthusiasm and patriotism’.102 This author, like Jerrold, sought to promote an English narrative of the war that recognized the qualities he believed had led to victory. This provocative piece encouraged a veteran to respond in a letter to the editor, printed two days later. The correspondent sympathized with Remarque’s work, claiming that it was ‘a pity that such an article should have been published when all minds are thinking of peace between all nations’. He bolstered his argument by drawing on the authority of his own war experience as a volunteer ‘shipped to Belgium in one of the first drafts of Kitchener’s army’, and concluded that if ‘a war book can be wholesome, it cannot be true, as no war was ever wholesome’.103 This veteran’s response reveals why Remarque’s work may have appealed to readers at the end of the 1920s. Having experienced the horrors of war, many veterans, including those who had eagerly enlisted in 1914, were hopeful for an enduring peace. They therefore valued strident denunciations of the conflict. This desire for peace also encouraged a mood of reconciliation with Germany, and a belief in the commonality of war experience. While some veterans constructed a national myth of war experience, others were thinking on more internationalist terms. Other readers, too, embraced foreign works. In an item of fan mail to Siegfried Sassoon, one former subaltern, H. A. Jones, wrote at length in appreciation not just of Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man but also of other war books. He identified Sassoon and Blunden’s work as ‘of a kind’, whereas he felt the ‘German books are so different’. But while many critics highlighted these differences to dismiss the German books, Jones claimed to ‘enjoy them all’. The contrast, Jones felt,

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‘reveals a difference in the general reaction to the war’.104 This is not necessarily a belief in the commonality of war experience, but it does reveal an acceptance of disillusionment in all its guises. Jones’s letter also demonstrates that veterans could express sympathy for the German perspective, even if it did not match their own. In the Daily Mirror the letters pages also began to reflect the critical controversy. One reader wrote to the editor and claimed, with a touch of black humour, that ‘what might well drive us all to take our own lives would be the “modern war novel” ’.105 An influx of similar letters prompted the newspaper to publish an article the following day, which observed that many readers ‘appear to be rising in rebellion against the dark depression produced by “war novels” ’. The author of this piece toed a middle line. He suggested that a ‘war novelist great enough to write “beyond” hatred’ was desirable, but also welcomed ‘the vituperative war novel as a useful reminder and sermon for those who are beginning to forget’.106 The editors of the Daily Mirror recognized their readers’ diverging opinions, for a day later the newspaper published a letter expressing support for war books. In what appeared to be a direct reaction to the seemingly suicidal correspondent of two days before, this reader wrote: ‘I disagree with your depressed correspondent. I think we need war novels. They reach people who won’t read histories of the war. They are mainly written by men who “went through it” and know’.107 Responses such as these again reveal the dichotomy between the personal and collective perspectives. As this reader suggests, it was precisely because they were personal and partial that many of the war books were read; readers deemed them more readable than military histories of the conflict, and consequently a mythology centred on individual experience developed. This helps to explain why the poetry of Wilfred Owen, which frequently used the poetic ‘I’ to invoke personal suffering, began to appeal to readers during this period. We should also note that this reader does not allude to any experience of his own, as many veterans did, but rather he speaks with deference for the authority of those with combat experience. Veterans’ organizations, however, tended not to approve of the popular war books. In January 1930, at the annual dinner for the Old Comrades’ Association of the Twelfth Gloucestershire Regiment, two colonels agreed that there were ‘too many war books which kept alive the morbid war spirit’.108 These veterans clearly believed that the emphasis on horror in some books detracted from the positive aspects of war experience celebrated by many ex-servicemen’s organizations. The British Legion, formed in 1921, was by far the largest of these and it too spoke out on numerous occasions against the deleterious effect of war books. At various Legion conferences across the country, veterans aired their complaints.

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In February 1930, at an event in Cardiff, Colonel John Brown, vice-chairman of the National Executive, asserted that ‘if the war books were true they would be an insult to ex-servicemen and none of them would be fit to walk the streets and mix with decent women’.109 As with critics like Jerrold, senior army officers in the legion felt that many war books invalidated the sacrifices of the British soldiers. There was also a moral concern: Remarque, Graves and Aldington, for example, had all been frank about the sexual exploits of the troops. The denial of these tales of debauchery, and a reaffirmation of the war’s meaning, were therefore clear motivating factors behind the Legion’s statements. At the Knoyle and Semley branch dinner in February 1930, for example, a Colonel Upton criticized war books for ‘presenting the British soldier either as a dissolute, drunken blackguard, or as a miserable microbe’.110 These veterans believed that war books had undermined the morality, morale and manliness of the British soldier. A serious source of outrage was Brigadier-General F.  P. Crozier’s memoir, A Brass-Hat in No Man’s Land, published by Jonathan Cape in 1930. Crozier, a reformed alcoholic, depicted numerous incidents of drunkenness among his officers, and highlighted the severe threat this had posed to discipline and security. He also lamented the troops’ penchant for prostitutes, and the potential health risks associated with these liaisons.111 Particularly in his depiction of drunkenness, however, Crozier was not alone:  numerous popular war books, such as Graves’s Good-bye to All That, and Manning’s Her Privates We, were replete with references to alcohol consumption.112 A Legion conference in Worthing in May 1930 appeared to have this literature in mind when it condemned books which ‘defame the honoured dead, grossly libel ex-servicemen and women, [and] give an exaggerated view of the incidents of the war’.113 Here then was a riposte to allegations of immorality, and a robust challenge to myths of relentless horror and futility. A further Legion conference in Cardiff in June 1930 passed a resolution ‘which deprecated the publication of war books where the author did not draw upon actual facts and personal experience’. The Legion also asserted that ‘the late war should in no circumstances be used as a medium for works of fiction if only out of respect for the dead’.114 In reducing the controversy to a simple matter of fact and fiction, the Legion therefore dismissed viewpoints they deemed abhorrent. But these conflicting narratives of the war, of course, had far more to do with interpretation and methods of representation than they did with the ‘truth’. Nor was genre a reliable marker of a book’s fidelity to fact. Numerous works of fiction such as Death of a Hero and A Farewell to Arms, were based, to varying degrees, on their author’s personal experiences. Other works, such as Good-bye

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to All That, despite being autobiographical, were prone to inaccuracies and exaggeration for deliberate dramatic effect. In April 1930, in the letters pages of The Times, other veterans echoed the responses of the British legion. Crozier’s memoir, recently published, appears to have been the catalyst for this outpouring of letters, with the morality and behaviour of soldiers a key concern. On 7 April, Brigadier-General C. D. BakerCarr wrote to the paper claiming that he was ‘unable to call to mind one single case of drunkenness on the part of an officer’. Far more was at stake than just historical accuracy; these accusations undermined the construct of the heroic and noble British soldier, and as such diluted the value of victory. Baker-Carr suggested that these books ‘fail utterly in depicting the general aspect of the war’.115 Again the irreconcilable dichotomy between the individual and collective perspective, as well as the ideological drivers associated with each, was at the heart of the problem. Baker-Carr’s argument struck a chord with other readers of The Times, with multiple letters published in agreement over the next few days,116 including one from General Ivor Maxse, who had proved himself an able commander during the war.117 Although The Times may well have received more, its editor chose to print only one letter in defence of the war books during this debate. Its author, a former Captain, pointed out that although cases of immorality were rare, they did occur, and such incidents were therefore a worthy subject for literature.118 An article in the Week-end Review similarly defended Crozier, noting that ‘ten years ago we faced all these things in flesh and blood. Are we to shrink now from facing them in print?’119 Nevertheless, many readers of The Times did not want to see ‘these things’ in print. The sheer quantity of letters to the newspaper encouraged an anonymous journalist to weigh in with an article on 10 April entitled ‘The Pen and the Sword’. In a more general critique of the war books trend, its author identified an emerging mythology, or ‘new legend’, and deemed it ‘as naked of the truth as the Emperor of his clothes’. This columnist, like many others, portrayed the war as a worthwhile experience.120 Letters continued to flood in, expressing their approval for the article, with one Lieutenant-Colonel describing it as ‘a masterpiece’.121 As with the war book critics, the horrific side of war was never denied, but the positive aspects were always stressed as a counterbalance.122 One former Captain, for example, claimed that his ‘clearest memory is of the great sense of comradeship that existed among us’.123 A negative, disillusioned memory of the war had clearly not been fixed in the minds of these veterans. These critiques, however, did not necessarily encompass the views of the broader veteran community. The majority of these correspondents were senior

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officers: this was not the response of the rank and file. The Legion, moreover, did not represent the majority of ex-servicemen. At its peak in 1938, membership totalled around 400,000 men, less than twenty per cent of the veteran community.124 The letters to The Times from veterans also reflect a limited cross section of ex-servicemen. The Times was a conservative paper and it should come as little surprise that these readers should express conservative responses to the war. Such responses did not regularly appear in the more left-leaning Manchester Guardian, for example. Subversive critiques of the nature and conduct of the war were unlikely to be expressed by readers of The Times and even less likely to be printed. The strength of this response, however, demonstrates that the memory of the war remained fiercely contested at the beginning of the 1930s.

‘The young and the war’ Veterans formed a large and vocal readership for war literature, but a younger demographic of readers had an entirely different relationship with the conflict. Some were adolescents during the war, acutely aware of it, yet too young to serve. These readers remembered the war:  it had permeated their lives while they were at school. War service, however, and particularly combat, was an imagined, mythologized experience for them. For other even younger readers, with no memories of the war at all, the entire conflict was an imagined event – an accretion of narratives and images, many of a literary origin. Commentators agreed that it was important for younger generations to understand what the war had meant. On Armistice Day 1929, for example, the Daily Mirror published an article by the novelist and journalist Norman Venner entitled ‘The Young and the War’. Venner claimed that ‘the young are the postwar generation, the old are the war generation’.125 This generational model was a product of the war’s mythology in itself, presenting war service as a profound experience, and one that has created a clear division between those who had been old enough to fight, and those who had not. The war is imagined as the defining event of the period, a discontinuity or gap in history which had created two distinct eras. Those who had come of age in one were irrevocably separated from those who had come of age in the other. The novelist Evelyn Waugh had made a similar point writing in the Spectator earlier in the year, emphasizing the distinct generational divisions wrought by the war.126 This narrative of the war as a great discontinuity has become one of the key myths of the conflict. It began to

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gain currency in the late 1920s with works such as Sassoon’s Memoirs of a FoxHunting Man, which painted an idealized, innocent picture of the pre-war world and contrasted this with the horrors of the trenches. And, as we shall see, it would later be powerfully conveyed in Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, which portrayed the war as a severe rupture separating Brittain’s generation from the next. Venner’s generational awareness is also an expression of this myth, and is used to make a clear point: those who were too young to fight cannot comprehend the experience of war. Venner feared, however, that many of the war books expressed only the negatives of war: ‘in the effort to impress the young, horror is piled on horror, disaster upon disaster, and the truth recedes down the years, until Loos is as distant as Agincourt’.127 The fear, then, was that the young were impressionable. Without their own personal memories to counter what they read, there was no antidote to the myths that these books perpetuated. Venner felt that as time passed, and veterans became fewer, the truth would slowly diminish and myths would take precedence. Those in educational positions also critiqued war books from this perspective. In February 1930, for example, the headmaster of Eton complained about the great emphasis on suffering in war literature, arguing that not enough attention had been paid to ‘the splendour of courage, the unselfishness, the generosity, and the self-sacrifice’ of the soldiers.128 Similarly, J. Howard Whitehouse, the headmaster of Bembridge School, in an address to other educational experts, claimed that war books were ‘frequently just the excuse for reflecting the vulgarity of the writer’s mind’.129 These educators were evidently concerned that war books were setting a damaging example to a new generation of readers with no experience of the conflict. This should come as no surprise: many of the disillusioned war books consciously sought to undermine public school values.130 Some commentators and veterans, however, believed in the value of war books for younger readers, particularly as international instability led to fears of a future conflict. An article in the Week-end Review in March 1930 agreed that ‘it is the younger generation who matter’, but also defended All Quiet on the Western Front against criticism:  ‘to shrink from reading it . . . is to shrink from looking the facts of war in the face. If it shocks a single person into determination against war all its crudities may be forgiven it’.131 In the eyes of this commentator, the horror of war needed to be exposed as forcefully as possible to dissuade future generations from resorting to it. The concern here, then, was less a need to convey war truthfully, but rather to convey it so awfully that no one would ever wish to repeat it.

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Norman F.  Ellison expressed similar sentiments in a letter of fan mail to Siegfried Sassoon. A  veteran himself, and an admirer of Memoirs of a FoxHunting Man, Ellison advanced a strident anti-war position: ‘I want my sons and in turn their sons to be warned against the insensate waste and stupidity of all warfare . . . I feel it is of the most vital urgency and importance that I, and others, should tell the rising generation the absolute TRUTH about war – as the men in the trenches knew it’.132 This succinct denunciation of the war is an example of how certain readers began to invoke the war’s futility as if it were an indisputable ‘truth’. Ellison, like many other veterans, was determined to deter the young from glorifying armed conflict, and his desire to disseminate his views, which had been informed by his reading of Sassoon, illustrates how literature, perhaps more so than works of history, could facilitate the transmission of myths from one generation to the next. Cultural memory and communicative memory, therefore, could reinforce one another. If the young were of such great a concern for those on both sides of the war books debate, how widely did they read this literature? Modris Eksteins has suggested that younger generations in particular may have been attracted to All Quiet on the Western Front, although he does not substantiate this claim.133 But Remarque’s bitterness may well have appealed to a sense of generational angst in readers keen to rebel against the values of their parents’ generation. Youthful curiosity may also have played a part. The Publisher and Bookseller, when explaining the causes of the ‘war books boom’, observed that ‘those who did not take part in the fighting in person wish to learn what it was really like for those whom they knew, who were there, but have not talked’.134 The young, of course, account for a significant proportion of this readership, and many of these readers may have turned to war literature if their veteran fathers had failed to satisfy their inquisitiveness.135 This was certainly the case for the novelist and Second World War poet Vernon Scannell, born in 1922, who reveals in his memoir Drums of Morning (1992) a particular fascination with the Great War as he was growing up: I suspect that most, or many, people of my generation – those who were born during or shortly after the war – are haunted by its imagery, its pathos, the waste, the heroism and futility. We were brought up with the echoes of the artillery barrages, the iron stammer of machine guns, the cries of the wounded, the songs and martial music sounding in our ears. There seemed to be pictures of no man’s land, of the trenches, the shattered landscape, barbed wire, ruined forms and churches, everywhere we looked.

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Scannell perfectly encapsulates the emotive power of the Great War’s cultural legacy during the interwar years, attesting to the omnipresence of images, sounds and symbols relating to the conflict. Indeed, his focus on the war’s sensory impact here echoes the language of Owen’s poetry. But for those veterans who had fought, the war was more than this; they had distinct memories to draw on that did not necessarily align with these cultural narratives. Youngsters like Scannell, however, had no direct experience of the war, although there were of course many real, tangible links back to the conflict at this stage. Scannell’s father, for instance, had volunteered to fight at the age of fourteen, and had keenly told his own ‘implausible stories’ of life in the trenches. These stories, however, would have been interpreted within the broader frameworks of collective memory which were emerging at the time. In Scannell’s case, literature was a crucial part of this. He suggests war books may have held more appeal for his generation than they did for veterans, for while he and his brother read them in the late 1930s, his father showed no interest in them.136 The curiosity of the young, therefore, may have been a more important driving force behind the popularity of war books than the nostalgia of veterans. Scannell, who left school at fourteen, also attests to the importance of the local library for providing the war books he read so avidly, for such institutions played an essential role in making these texts available to working-class youngsters. In Drums of Morning he recalls himself and his brother bringing home and reading Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Blunden’s Undertones of War, but they particularly enjoyed Graves’s Good-bye to All That and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. The latter encouraged Scannell to try writing his own war novel.137 Scannell and his brother were not necessarily typical of other working-class youths in their literary pursuits, but his account suggests that the First World War was a source of curiosity for many young men in particular. This was also true for the poet Charles Causley, born in 1917, whose veteran father had died when Causley was seven due to the long-standing effects of poison gas.138 Like Scannell, Causley was from a modest background, but he remembers purchasing, rather than borrowing, his first war book: ‘later in my teens, on a first visit to London, I bought for one-and-six in the Charing Cross Road, a red-covered copy of The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon. It was my first clear view of my father’s world of 1914–1918, and I  went on to read Graves, Blunden, Owen’.139 Again, literary works, rather than historical texts, appear to have been most influential here. As Alisa Miller has argued, in selecting texts such as these, young readers ‘began the process of defining the canon. And the poets and writers that the generation growing up in the 1920s most responded

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to were those who found a way to personalise war experience’.140 The personal, the partial and the emotive took precedence over dispassionate, overarching accounts. This privileging of the literary over the historical is what continues to rile many historians today. But did the reading of disillusioned war literature encourage the young to interpret the conflict in a negative light? Evidence suggests that it may have done: the British policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany in the 1930s is indicative of a widespread antipathy towards war, perhaps partly a product of the ‘war books boom’ and the attitudes of a post-war generation now coming of age.141 Stanley Baldwin, for instance, had defended his decision not to raise the issue of rearmament in parliament in 1933 because of strong anti-war sentiments. One example he cited was the famous decision of the Oxford Union to pass the motion that ‘this house will in no circumstances fight for King and Country’. This may have reflected changing attitudes towards the First World War among the young, but it is unlikely to have been a product of a sustained anti-war attitude  – none of the students who voted in favour of the motion became conscientious objectors during the Second World War.142 Perhaps most importantly, however, the Oxford Union was by no means representative of the entire post-war generation. Despite the growing popularity of disenchanted war literature, there was also a plethora of more traditional interpretations of the war for the young to contend with, and commentators in the early 1930s expressed scepticism as to whether younger generations were being sufficiently deterred from glorifying war. A  journalist in the Week-end Review, for example, paraphrased a young man who had suggested quite the reverse: He and his kind were met every day with reminders of the heroism and sacrifice of their kinsmen . . . so they had come to revere these men with the awe and emulation usually reserved for saints and martyrs. Now their ambition was to follow so fine an example and prove themselves worthy successors.143

Many young people in Britain may have felt the same. As we have seen, more conservative, glorifying visions of war were still disseminated during the interwar years, with the likes of Raymond and Brooke continuing to sell well. And more durable sites of memory, such as war memorials, preserved an interpretation of war that valued heroism and sacrifice. Perhaps most significantly, the young often first encountered the war not through the now-canonical texts, but through the juvenile literature of the interwar years. Books such as those in W.  E. Johns’s Biggles series, which narrated aerial warfare for young boys,

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were immensely popular. As the historian Michael Paris has shown, these works tended to portray war as a heroic adventure, and were part of a broader ‘pleasure culture of war’ which has persisted in Britain since the Victorian era.144 But vehement anti-war books may also have fed an appetite for war among the young. The historian George Mosse has argued that All Quiet on the Western Front ‘undoubtedly owed part of its enormous popularity to the fact that it could be read as a schoolboy’s adventure story’.145 Sir Ian Hamilton, commander of British forces at Gallipoli, certainly felt so, suggesting in 1930 that due to books such as Remarque’s ‘our younger generation are in danger of becoming jingoes’.146 Hamilton’s hyperbolic statement should be treated with caution: he was using the war books proponents’ arguments against them in an effort to denounce anti-war literature. And yet, if we return to Scannell, we see that he may have had a point. Although not a ‘jingo’, Scannell was drawn to war books less through pacifist sentiment and more through a fascination with war. He admits that he and his brother, despite reading these books in the late 1930s, had no ‘awareness of the imminence of another global war’, and were not therefore motivated by pacifist concerns. He also expresses a vicarious relationship with these books, in which war seemed terrible, but also strangely alluring: ‘I found myself entering the world of terror and black beauty that had haunted my early childhood and I experienced a sense of recognition, as if, in an earlier incarnation, I myself had fought and suffered on the western front’.147 Perhaps most telling of all, Scannell keenly enlisted to fight in the Second World War when he turned eighteen in 1940. Given the willingness of many other young men to go to war, in spite – or perhaps because – of their knowledge of the last conflict, Scannell was evidently not alone. Various literary figures who came of age just after the war also had an ambiguous relationship with the conflict. For these men, who had narrowly missed out on military service, the Great War often inspired a sense of fascination. The poet W. H. Auden, born in 1907, was a keen admirer of Wilfred Owen, but he had not been converted to pacifism. Although he did not fight himself, he had travelled to the Spanish Civil War and the Sino-Japanese War with the intention of writing his own war poetry.148 Owen was also an influence on many of Auden’s friends and contemporaries, including Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood. Born in 1909, Spender had intended to witness war first-hand when he travelled to Spain in 1937 to work as a propagandist, and the civil war there inspired him to write numerous poems, many of which betrayed the influence of Owen.149 Isherwood, born in 1904, similarly attests to a keen interest in war literature, and especially Wilfred Owen, in his autobiography Lions and Shadows (1938).150

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The title of the autobiography itself was initially used for a coming-of-age novel Isherwood had attempted to write as an undergraduate, and had been taken from a line in C. E. Montague’s Fiery Particles (1923), a collection of short stories about the war. Isherwood appears to have had an especially complex relationship with the Great War. Rather than abhorring the conflict, he admitted that among himself and his peers there was a subconscious ‘feeling of shame that we hadn’t been old enough to take part’. Isherwood went on to explain this more thoroughly:  ‘like most of my generation, I  was obsessed by a complex of terrors and longings connected with the idea “War”. “War”, in this purely neurotic sense meant The Test. The Test of your courage, of your maturity, of your sexual prowess’.151 Isherwood supports George Mosse’s assertion that ‘the compassionate poems by Wilfred Owen produced envy rather than pity for a generation that had experienced so much’.152 Isherwood may have been convinced enough of the horrors of war to fear it, but despite his reading of Owen, he had a ‘longing’ to have taken part, if only to prove himself as capable.153 Isherwood’s father, a professional soldier, had been killed in the First World War, and this may well have contributed to his obsession with the conflict. With the removal of this source of communicative memory, cultural memory – and especially literary representations – took on an even greater importance for Isherwood. The impact of Isherwood’s public school upbringing also evidently influenced his neurosis regarding the war. Traditional constructions of masculinity, which associated martial vigour with manliness, led to a sense of inadequacy among young men like Isherwood – particularly those who had been old enough to see their senior school contemporaries leave for the trenches. Isherwood had initially conformed to these ideals of masculinity, and had enjoyed participating in the Officers’ Training Corps at his school, although he would later reject the values of his upbringing.154 It is surely no coincidence that Auden and Spender were educated in similar environments; this may well have informed their desire to experience war for themselves. The values of a public school education had certainly influenced the Eton-educated George Orwell, born in 1903. Writing of the First World War, Orwell conceded that ‘you felt yourself a little less of a man, because you had missed it’.155 Orwell, of course, was no pacifist, and had volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. This conflict, which provided a clear ideological justification for those on the left of the political spectrum, may have fuelled Orwell’s romantic view of warfare. Although Auden and Spender did not fight themselves, their desire to travel to Spain was motivated by similar convictions.156

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Younger generations of public school boys also found war alluring. The Second World War poet Keith Douglas, born in 1920, was a keen admirer of Owen and had read Ian Parsons’s The Progress of Poetry while at school. Far from being revolted by war, however, Douglas joined the school’s cadet corps where, as his biographer Desmond Graham notes, he was drawn ‘to the aesthetic attractions of marching and drilling and guns’. Part of the appeal here was that the cadet training was a link to the ‘Great War of his father’.157 As with Scannell, this familial link, supplemented by an interest in the literature of the First World War, inspired a sense of fascination. It appears that the younger generations, perhaps the most likely to mythologize the war as pointless slaughter, did not entirely embrace this interpretation either. But while both familial and literary memories were influential, these were not the only means through which Britons encountered the Great War during the 1920s and 1930s.

Cinema and the ‘war books boom’ Films also contributed towards the public’s complex relationship with the First World War during this period. The nascent boom in the cinema industry, moreover, intensified the popular influence of war literature during the interwar years. The rise of cinema had coincided neatly with the First World War; mechanized warfare and the moving image, were, as Laura Marcus has noted, ‘twin technologies of modernity’,158 and the war provided a powerful subject for filmmakers. During the conflict, the film The Battle of the Somme (1916), a documentary consisting of real footage from the frontline, was a box office hit on the British home front, with over 20 million tickets being sold in the first six weeks alone. Given that the film continued to run for months after this, it is likely that well over half of Britain’s population of 46 million saw the film.159 There was a limited appetite for war cinema in Britain immediately after the conflict, but a handful of successful war films were made. As with literature, these films – such as Maurice Elvey’s Comradeship (1919) and Mademoiselle from Armentières (1926) – tended to have romantic plots celebrating patriotic duty to King and Country. Hollywood, however, dominated the film industry during this period. As the 1920s progressed, the war featured frequently in American films, many of which adopted a more ambiguous stance in relation to the conflict.160 The Big Parade (1925), directed by King Vidor, avoided glorifying combat in the manner of British films, but became one of the greatest Hollywood hits of the 1920s, grossing 6  million dollars and earning MGM 3.4  million dollars in profit.161 Other

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successful Hollywood films from this period, such as What Price Glory? (1926) and Wings (1927), also conveyed a more ambivalent attitude towards the war.162 The enormous success of films such as these attests to the emergence of cinema as the dominant cultural medium during this period. In the mid-1920s cinema attendance reached 20 million a week, and, despite the economic downturn, 17 million a week still attended the cinema at the beginning of the 1930s.163 For these reasons, Michael Paris has suggested that cinema was as influential, if not more influential, as literature in constructing the memory of the Great War.164 We should remember, however, that the film and publishing industries were mutually reinforcing during this period, with film drawing much of its inspiration from literature. Many of the successful works of the ‘war books boom’ were adapted into films, the popularity of which further stimulated the sales of the books, lining the pockets of publishers and filmmakers alike. The ‘war books boom’ is certainly an apt phrase, for it coincided with the ‘boom’ in the American film industry triggered by the introduction of sound. ‘Talkies’ were first introduced in the United States in 1927, swiftly replacing silent films, and this new medium would go on to revolutionize the filmic representation of warfare. Cinematic adaptations of literary works, and the reception of these films in Britain, further illustrate literature’s role in constructing the popular memory of the First World War during the interwar years. The first major cinematic success of the boom was the screen adaptation of Journey’s End, released in 1930. Gainsborough Pictures and Welsh-Pearson produced the film, enlisting James Whale as director. Whale had directed the successful stage version of Sherriff ’s work and was the ideal choice, not least because of his own experiences, which gave him a valuable familiarity with the play’s subject matter. A veteran himself, Whale had served as a junior officer on the Western Front for a year, before being taken prisoner during an assault on the German lines in August 1917. While imprisoned near Hanover, Whale had discovered his flair for stage production, helping to produce a range of theatrical works.165 Although filmed in Hollywood, the film’s cast was entirely British – something Sherriff had insisted upon. The film was a faithful reproduction of the play, and therefore presented an ambiguous picture of the conflict, which, although tragic in parts, was by no means anti-war. Sherriff himself expressed his admiration for the film, despite initial concerns regarding the adaptation.166 Like the play, the film is set primarily in a dugout on the Western Front, centring on the dialogue between the main protagonists, but it does also feature realistic battle scenes which effectively employ sound to convey the carnage of trench warfare. As in the stage

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production, Sherriff ’s celebration of stoicism, endurance and public-school masculinity is in evidence. While the film’s climax poignantly depicts the death of the young officer Raleigh, the meaning or validity of the war is not questioned.167 The première of the film also had a martial flavour, with a band of the Grenadier Guards performing while cinemagoers entered the auditorium.168 Journey’s End was of course compatible with this performance. Such an accompaniment to a truly disillusioned picture would have struck a more dissonant note. Responses to the film in Britain were largely favourable. The trade paper of the cinema industry, The Bioscope, described Journey’s End as the ‘finest war film ever shown’, praising it for presenting ‘as realistic a picture of trench warfare as we have yet seen, without unduly stressing those horrors that are best left to the imagination’.169 The horror of war, for The Bioscope, therefore needed to be expressed with restraint, and there are echoes here of the critical response to Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. The Observer, however, criticized the film for having ‘no independence’ and being a ‘mere follower’ of the original version. Nevertheless, this reviewer had no qualms with the film’s stance on the war, and rather reflected an antipathy to the ‘talkies’ among some commentators who still dismissed cinema as a popular medium lacking in artistic merit. Regardless, the film adaptation of Journey’s End brought Sherriff ’s vision of the war to an even broader audience than the play, its success a testament to the conflicted memories of the war that persisted during this period. Later in 1930, the immense popularity of the film adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, just like the book itself, reflected a public appetite for disillusionment. Following the novel’s unexpected international success, Universal Pictures – owned by the German, and recently converted pacifist, Carl Laemmle – purchased the rights. Laemmle’s son, Carl Laemmle Jr., produced the film, and the Russian-born émigré Lewis Milestone directed it, with Lewis Ayres cast as Paul Bäumer. The film in many respects remained faithful to the book, powerfully depicting the waste and horror of the war. Its opening title card mirrored Remarque’s epigraph to the novel – ‘this story is neither an accusation nor a confession’  – and the key moments from the plot, including the deaths of major protagonists, and Paul Bäumer himself in the book’s final scene, were recreated. Unlike the novel, however, the film opens in a schoolroom, where a jingoistic schoolmaster urges the young Bäumer and his classmates to enlist with the phrase ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’.170 Given the growing reputation of his poetry during this period, it is possible that the inclusion of this phrase was a reference to Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, which exposes such patriotic rhetoric as ‘the old lie’. Many cinemagoers may also have recognized

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this allusion. Through these early classroom scenes, the film stridently conveys a sense of generational betrayal, reinforcing a narrative arc that takes Remarque’s characters from enthusiasm to despair. Much of the film’s power also derives from Milestone’s emphasis on realism and the film’s convincing depictions of trench warfare, which effectively employed sound to recreate the sensory experience of battle. The film was a great commercial and critical success, receiving glowing reviews and winning two Academy Awards in the United States. In Britain, the film was the first to open simultaneously in two cinemas,171 with huge queues of people waiting to see it when it became available elsewhere.172 All Quiet on the Western Front also garnered favourable reviews in the British press. The Guardian, for example, identified with the film’s depiction of the war, praising it for driving home ‘its truth that war is bad because it is waste’.173 The Bioscope also lauded the film, describing it as ‘a powerful indictment of modern warfare’, and stressing that ‘every picture theatre is morally bound to show it’.174 Writing in the Sunday Times, Sydney Carroll expressed his admiration for the film while evoking the emergent myths of the war:  ‘the dangers, the savageries, the madness of war, and the appalling waste and destruction of youth, the shattering of hopes, illusions, beliefs, the futility of patriotism and nationalism – all these are presented with relentless veracity’.175 Like the book, the film therefore helped to popularize Remarque’s position on the war, solidifying the narrative of disillusionment, and contributing to the developing perception of the war as an unremittingly horrific and futile experience. The success of the film no doubt helped to sustain the popularity of the novel in libraries and bookshops throughout 1930. Like the publishing industry, however, British cinema continued to reflect the demand for more consoling narratives of the war.176 Another novel adapted for the screen in 1930, for instance, was Ernest Raymond’s Tell England, which, as we have seen, conveyed a traditional, patriotic interpretation of the conflict. Anthony Asquith, son of the former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, directed the film, and A. P. Herbert, the author of the Secret Battle, wrote the screenplay. The film remained faithful to the book’s plot, although considerable portions from the early half of the novel were omitted. As with other contemporary war films, realism was a central concern, with great efforts made to convey battle convincingly. Consequently, the film is grimmer and more horrifying than the book, driving home more forcefully the novel’s tragic climax, in which the protagonist Doe dies during the Gallipoli campaign. Nevertheless, the patriotism and romanticism of the novel remain intact, and the film reassures the viewer that these deaths were not in vain.177 For these reasons, The Times praised the

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film, stating that ‘though it does not shirk the terror of the war, it is never a whine of defeatists. It recognizes heroism as a thing of beauty, which, even when frustrate, is not in vain’.178 This review echoes Jerrold in its dismissal of ‘defeatists’ and in its celebration of heroism. Raymond’s message therefore still struck a chord a decade after the novel’s publication – a further testament to the persistence of more traditional interpretations of the war effort during the ‘war books boom’. Surveying British cinema during the interwar years, and pointing to films such as Tell England, Michael Paris has argued that ‘films which portrayed the war in traditional and patriotic terms far outnumbered those that even raised some ambiguously phrased doubts about whether such sacrifice could ever be justified’. Paris concludes, therefore, that there is ‘little cinematic evidence to suggest that there was any widespread “turning away from war” ’.179 Despite this, however, both the book and film versions of All Quiet on the Western Front were the greatest popular successes of the ‘war books boom’. Disillusionment therefore did gain significant ground, even if did not entirely usurp traditional representations of the conflict.

Conclusion The popular memory of the Great War during the 1920s and 1930s was fiercely contested and fragmented. In the previous chapter we saw how publishers continued to promote a variety of conflicting visions of the conflict; the reception history of literature during the interwar years explains why this was the case:  the views of the ‘Contents’ and the ‘Not-Contents’ would not be reconciled before the Second World War. As we have seen, Maurice Halbwachs, when pioneering the concept of ‘collective memory’, did not view it as operating on a national level, but rather within smaller groups of individuals. Indeed, there was no overarching national memory of the war in Britain during this period. Critics, authors, veterans and younger generations of readers all grappled with the war’s memory, but they could not reach a consensus regarding what the war had meant or how it should be represented. Authors and publishers, therefore, had to negotiate this fragmented literary marketplace. To explore how they did this, the following chapter analyses the promotion and reception of two key texts of the interwar years.

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Marketing Myth: Richard Aldington, Vera Brittain and the Memory of the First World War

In October 1929, during the height of the ‘war books boom’, Vera Brittain described Richard Aldington’s novel Death of a Hero ‘as one of the greatest war books that I  have so far read’. In this review of the book, published in Time and Tide magazine, Brittain claimed that never had she encountered ‘such a thorough-going embodiment of disillusion’.1 To be sure, Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero, published by Chatto & Windus in September 1929, is the archetypal disillusionment novel. A bitter and vehement polemic, Death of a Hero embodies many of the key facets of the First World War mythology that began to gain ground during the interwar years. At the same time as she was reading Death of a Hero, however, Brittain had just begun planning her own war book, inspired by the recent spate of male trench narratives. The result, published in 1933 by Victor Gollancz Ltd., was Testament of Youth, an autobiographical account of Brittain’s early life, chronicling her bereavements and nursing experiences during the Great War. Although Brittain’s prose is more measured than Aldington’s invective, Testament of Youth, like Death of a Hero, also forcefully articulates many of the myths of the war that began to emerge during the conflict and have endured since. This chapter examines how these two works mythologize the war, demonstrating the critical roles played by their respective publishers and finally discussing how these books were received. In doing so it unites the themes of the previous two chapters, demonstrating how the reception climate influenced the marketing of books, and how these publishing strategies conditioned the reception and development of the contested memory of the war.

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Both books are revealing from a publishing perspective. Aldington’s regular exchange of letters with Charles Prentice, a partner at Chatto & Windus, demonstrates the pivotal role played by publishers in constructing the memory of the war, and reveals the various competing tensions which underpinned the publication of war books. Similarly, Victor Gollancz, one of the most innovative and enterprising firms during this period, was integral to Testament of Youth’s success, actively promoting Brittain’s narrative of the war. Yet, despite these similarities, Brittain’s favourable response to Death of a Hero in October 1929 is rather surprising. Although she sympathized with Aldington’s vision of the war, she would later criticize him for the ‘cynical fury of scorn’ that he directed at women in the novel.2 While Testament of Youth affirmed Aldington’s disillusionment, it was also a riposte to his misogyny. Through examining these two texts in succession, therefore, I also reveal how the memory of the war remained fractured along gender lines.

Myth and memory in Death of a Hero Born in 1892, into a provincial middle-class family, Richard Aldington began his literary career as a poet, founding the imagist movement with H. D. and Ezra Pound.3 In 1916 he voluntarily enlisted and fought on the Western Front with the Royal Sussex Regiment as a private, before being commissioned in 1917. The war had a profound psychological effect on Aldington, and he found it difficult to express himself creatively throughout much of the 1920s, instead making a living through literary criticism and translation. During this period he made a number of aborted attempts at writing a war book based on his experiences, before completing Death of a Hero, his first novel, in early 1929. The novel is divided into a number of distinct sections, and is narrated from the perspective of an anonymous veteran and acquaintance of the protagonist George Winterbourne. The book’s prologue is set in 1918 with the announcement of Winterbourne’s death on the Western Front and is followed by a novel in three parts. The first relates Winterbourne’s Victorian and Edwardian childhood; the second focuses on him as a young artist in London, and on his ménage à trois with his wife Elizabeth and mistress Fanny; the final section deals with the war, culminating in Winterbourne’s demise. Aldington’s choice to kill off the protagonist, and his decision to establish Winterbourne’s death from the very beginning of the novel – and not least in the title – is a notable tragic fictional device, which, as Aldington freely admitted, was ‘shamelessly cribbed from Euripides’.4

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Crucially, however, the title also reinforces the myth of the ‘lost generation’. The phrase itself was credited to Gertrude Stein by Ernest Hemingway, who used it in the epitaph to his successful novel The Sun Also Rises (1927). Coined to describe a cohort who had come of age around the time of the First World War, the term was applied to the artists and writers cut adrift from society as a consequence of the conflict. But, despite being statistically inaccurate, it also came to describe the dead: those who were ‘lost’ forever.5 Aldington himself did not use the phrase, but did much to reinforce the myth: he describes Winterbourne, for instance, as one ‘of a generation of young men who mostly perished in their twenties’.6 Death of a Hero also expounds the brutality and degradation of trench warfare. In the novel’s war section, Aldington vividly conveys the physical and mental strain of combat, depicting battle as a ‘timeless confusion, a chaos of noise, fatigue, anxiety and horror’. He underscores this with graphic depictions of death and injury: ‘the head of one man was smashed into his steel helmet and lay a sticky mess of blood and hair half-severed from his body’. Although critics such as Cyril Falls indicted some war novels for presenting war as a consistent succession of these ordeals, Aldington is not so heavy-handed in Death of a Hero. The novel also narrates life in a quiet sector of the line, which leads Winterbourne to ‘think that the dangers of war had been exaggerated, while its physical discomforts and tedium had been greatly underestimated’.7 Death of a Hero does not therefore perpetuate a myth of relentless combat, nor can this accusation be accurately attributed to many books. Boredom, although not part of the war’s mythology, is, as we have seen, a recurring trope in many books of the boom. Yet in his portrayal of the squalor and discomfort of war, Aldington’s narrative is still firmly centred on suffering and disenchantment, rather than valour and heroism. The novel’s title is surely intended to be ironic: there were no heroes in an age of mass, mechanized warfare. As Aldington’s narrator explains towards the end of the novel, ‘it is absurd to talk about men being brave or cowards. There were greater or less degrees of sensibility, more or less self-control’.8 Crucially, Aldington dismisses the war as a pointless tragedy, indicting ‘the whole sickening bloody waste of it, the damnable stupid waste and torture of it’.9 Death of a Hero, like Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, was therefore a key expression the war’s futility during the interwar years. What made Aldington’s work unique, however, was that it was one of the first books to express such vehemence from a British perspective. This, as we shall see, would have important implications for the book’s reception in Britain.

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Despite his vitriol, Aldington tempers his narrative by providing some acknowledgement of the value of comradeship, noting how ‘friendships between soldiers during the war were a real and beautiful and unique relationship’. Later in the novel, Aldington’s narrator expresses an almost reverent admiration for the manliness of fellow soldiers:  ‘there was something intensely masculine about them, something very pure and immensely friendly and stimulating. They had been where no woman or half-man . . . could endure to be’.10 This surprisingly conventional, even martial, inscription of masculinity is dissonant with Aldington’s tone regarding the war, and negates the irony of the novel’s title. The undercurrents here of both homophobia and homoeroticism further betray Aldington’s conflicted attitude. Aldington’s celebration of homosocial bonding reflects another myth of the war: the supposed alienation of soldiers from civilians. This notion found one of its most avid expressions in the wartime poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, and is central to the narrative of disillusionment.11 In Death of a Hero, Aldington’s stress on the value of comradeship at the front is offset against his disdain for civilians, and this attitude, as Vera Brittain would point out, is distinctly laden with misogyny. Women, through their inevitable lack of war experience, are damningly presented as unsympathetic jingoes: ‘white feathers, and all that, you know. Oh, the women were marvellous’. In a scene resonant of numerous other works of the boom, Winterbourne returns from the front on leave, but despite being surrounded by his wife and acquaintances, ‘he was amazed to find how remote he felt, how completely he had nothing to say.’12 Such scenes of alienation elide the various factors that bridged the division between home and front, and historians have since stressed the strong links maintained between soldiers and civilians.13 The myth, however, played an important role in promoting the supposed authority of trench experience. At this stage, therefore, the war’s memory remained distinctly masculine in character. In similar fashion to Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man and Good-bye to All That, for example, Death of a Hero also narrates life before the war. Aldington’s tone is uniquely trenchant, however. Through its depiction of Victorian and Edwardian life, the first part of the novel acts as a scathing generational critique. Aldington rails against the hypocrisies of the era, including the public school ethos, patriotism, imperialism, philistinism and sexual repression. The values of muscular Christianity, which infused pre-war constructions of masculinity, and sustained voluntary enlistment among the privileged classes, are sardonically undercut: ‘as we know, there is no price too high to pay for the privilege of being a thoroughly manly fellow’.14 The values of an older generation, therefore, are held responsible

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for the tragedy of the war. Aldington reinforces the myth that the war had been avoidable and futile, a product of domestic attitudes, rather than a righteous response to an international crisis. Like many other books of the boom, Death of a Hero’s depiction of the war is framed through a lens of post-war disillusionment. In the prologue, during his embittered characterization of the protagonist’s parents, Aldington’s narrator laments how the ‘war has taught its Winterbournes nothing’. Shortly after, he complains how the ‘Two Minutes’ Silence once a year isn’t doing much – in fact it’s doing nothing’.15 The idea that post-war commemoration fails to recognize and atone for the tragedy of the conflict fuels Aldington’s disillusionment. This sense of the war’s horror, waste and futility – amplified by post-war malaise – provides the animus for the novel, as it does, for example, in All Quiet on the Western Front. Death of a Hero is consequently an exemplar of British disenchantment with the war, and a synthesis of the key myths that have come to define it. These myths, however, were heavily contested in 1929: there was no guarantee that Aldington’s bitter invective would be greeted with enthusiasm. The marketing of the work would need to be finely tuned.

‘The market is getting flooded with them’: Publishing Death of a Hero In Paris, in early 1929, Aldington met Donald Friede, a partner at the American publishing house Covici-Friede. Friede was enthused after seeing the incomplete manuscript of Death of a Hero, agreed to publish the book and recommended that Aldington show the work to Charles Prentice, a partner at Chatto & Windus.16 On 30 March, with the ‘war books boom’ gaining momentum, Aldington wrote to Prentice, buoyed by the commercial climate, and expressed his desire to have the book published by Chatto & Windus.17 Aldington realized, however, that speed would be necessary to exploit the market while it was still receptive to war books. On 1 May 1929, in a telegram to Covici-Friede, Aldington wrote: ‘referring great success Journey’s End and German war novels urge earliest fall publication Death of a Hero to take advantage public mood. Large scale English war novel might go big now’.18 Later that day, Aldington contacted Prentice, quoting his telegram to Covici-Friede, and urging a swift decision.19 Aldington was therefore acutely aware of the propitious market for war books. Although Journey’s End was milder and less venomous than Death of a Hero, its popularity was surely evidence of a growing public interest in the war,

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while Remarque’s work convinced Aldington that an English novel of comparable vitriol could prove equally lucrative. Another German war novel Aldington may have had in mind here was Arnold Zweig’s The Case of Sergeant Grischa, which, as we have seen, was also a commercial success. Aldington sensed, however, that this literary trend might be a fleeting fad rather than a more sustained reengagement with the war, and urged Prentice to market the book accordingly: ‘I think . . . that the book must be “put” over as a war novel and we must get it out as soon as possible’.20 Death of a Hero is broader in scope than Journey’s End and All Quiet on the Western Front, both of which focus solely on the experience of war. Its depiction of pre-war society opened up other avenues for marketing, but Aldington clearly felt it wise to draw on the novel’s war section and exploit the popularity of this theme. On 15 May, Prentice confirmed that Chatto & Windus had accepted CoviciFriede’s terms for the rights to publish the novel in Britain. He also expressed his enjoyment of the text, noting ‘what a splendid piece of writing I  think it is’.21 Prentice was evidently sympathetic to Aldington’s vision of the war, and, as a veteran of the conflict himself, appears to have shared similar experiences. In a letter to Prentice in 1931, for instance, Aldington alluded to their war service, noting ‘what we silly buggers went through’, and highlighting the strength of their friendship: ‘we’re just as much side by side as if we were in the line’.22 Prentice’s warm praise for the work also helped foster a productive working relationship with Aldington which was to prove invaluable in allowing them to overcome a number of obstacles to the book’s publication. Due to the increase in the use of literary agents, this form of direct interaction was becoming less common, although it was certainly not unique during the ‘war books boom’. As we have seen, it was Peter Davies’s close relationship with Frederic Manning that brought Her Privates We to fruition. The first obstacle concerned the need for expurgation in order to avoid prosecution. Death of a Hero married its bitter tone with unpalatable language: it contained a number of sexual references and some occasional profanity within the dialogue. This stark use of language was a potent weapon in Aldington’s scathing attack on the inhibitions and hypocrisy of the Victorian era, and was important for a realistic depiction of the war, yet he and Prentice were faced with little choice but to expurgate the text. As J. H. Willis Jr. has demonstrated in his study of war book censorship, publishers had good reason to be cautious. Covici-Friede had recently been taken to court in America for publishing Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928), a novel that documented a lesbian love affair, and Jonathan Cape had to withdraw the book from circulation in

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Britain. Ernest Hemingway’s war novel A Farewell to Arms similarly fell victim to censorship on both sides of the Atlantic.23 After accepting the book, Prentice therefore sent Aldington ‘a list of purple words and passages’ which he felt would have to be omitted.24 Aldington himself had been aware of the likely need for expurgation since commencing correspondence with Prentice and reluctantly acquiesced.25 He insisted, however, on using rows of asterisks to replace the words omitted from the text, in order to draw attention to the restraints imposed upon him.26 Despite understandable concerns, Prentice agreed to Aldington’s wishes on 2 July.27 As Willis has argued, the excisions resulted in ‘a badly damaged and compromised text’.28 This was true in an aesthetic as well as literary sense. In some instances the asterisks stretched across the page for a number of lines, much to the detriment of the book’s visual appeal. In this respect, the demands of the marketplace detracted from Aldington’s message. Had he not been forced to expurgate the text, the novel would have provided an even blunter indictment of the conflict. Without making these compromises, however, the novel may not have been published at all. By ensuring works such as this were made suitable for publication, publishers like Prentice played a crucial role in shaping the popular memory of the war. The design of the dustcover also reflected the tension between artistic integrity and commercial viability. On 28 June, Aldington wrote to Prentice with the following suggestion: ‘why not ask Paul Nash to do one? . . . Tell him from me to make it hard, abstract and bitter’.29 Nash had been an official war artist, heavily influenced by Vorticism, and during the 1920s was at the vanguard of the modernist movement in British art.30 He had also worked with Aldington before, providing illustrations for Aldington’s poetry collection Images of War (1919).31 Aldington evidently felt that Nash’s work complemented his experimentation with modernist literary forms, and intended the cover to reinforce the novel’s bitter message. Aldington’s commitment to the highbrow, however, was not necessarily conducive to commercial success. Prentice prudently warned Aldington that ‘the abstractness’ should ‘not be carried too far; a dust cover must have some pictorial quality and some popular flavour; otherwise it will not do its job of attracting the populace’.32 Prentice remained a shrewd businessman, and was not afraid to temper his author’s ambitions. The final cover suggests that Prentice’s wishes were fulfilled (Figure 3.1). The design employed recognizable symbols of the Western Front, such as barbed wire and plumes of smoke, and was likely to resonate with the public imagination. This was perhaps the perfect compromise, because while not abstract,

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these symbols firmly alluded to the horror of the battlefield and were in keeping with Aldington’s bitter denunciation of the war. These exchanges over the dustcover illustrate how commercial drivers played an influential role in the construction of the memory of the war during this period. Prentice not only approved a cover that reinforced the horrors of the war and appeased his author, but also ensured the design had the ‘popular flavour’ necessary for broad commercial appeal. As with the compromises regarding the novel’s expurgation, this

Figure 3.1 Paul Nash’s dust jacket design for the first edition of Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero (Chatto & Windus, 1929).

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approach ensured that the book, and with it the narrative of the war it espoused, reached a broad section of the public. Although Aldington had initially been keen to market the novel as a war book, he began to change his mind. In a letter to Prentice on 4 August, Aldington advocated a different approach, suggesting how ‘it would be a mistake to present it merely as a war book – the market is getting flooded with them’. Although the popularity of war books had provided impetus, Aldington now feared that the market was becoming saturated. The solution was product differentiation. Though the cover by Nash alluded to the war, the accompanying blurb and advertising provided opportunities for Chatto & Windus to reposition the novel. Aldington therefore used his letter carefully to establish the book’s additional themes, describing it as ‘a tri-partite survey of English lower-middle and middle-class society . . . and an attempt to show . . . how a catastrophe like the War is rendered possible by the human failings of ordinary people as much as by the machinations of politicians’.33 Prentice responded positively on 7 August, and agreed that the market was threatening to become saturated: ‘I am glad you suggest that the book should not be presented merely as a war book; one hears of several that are coming out in the autumn. It will go down far better as a mixture’.34 Prentice may have been referring to Graves’s Good-bye to All That and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, both of which were published in the autumn of 1929. With this potential competition, the ideal marketing solution was to exploit the ‘war books boom’, while simultaneously differentiating the product. Striking the right balance would be paramount. The blurb for the first edition of Death of a Hero illustrates how Aldington and Prentice chose to promote the novel. It describes the book as ‘a survey of English middle-class society and an attempt to show, by forceful satire, how a catastrophe such as the War is rendered possible by the failings of ordinary people as much as by the machinations of politicians’.35 This is a considerable concession to Aldington’s wishes regarding product differentiation, largely replicating the author’s aforementioned letter. Yet the blurb hardly courts mass appeal. By conveying Aldington’s combative, accusatory message, and by laying the blame for the war at the foot of ‘ordinary people’, it risks alienating its potential readership. It does, however, position the novel within a growing mood of disillusionment, allying the book with other vitriolic attacks such as All Quiet on the Western Front. As with their position on censorship, Aldington and Prentice continued to balance mass-market appeal with artistic integrity. The blurb also presents the novel as a broad societal critique – a reflection on the causes, rather than the conduct of the war. Surprisingly, Aldington’s own

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war experiences, which heavily influenced elements of the novel, are not drawn upon here. Nowhere is there any reference to Death of a Hero’s war section, or the fighting on the Western Front. The blurb therefore exploits popular interest in the war by alluding to the conflict, while still distancing itself from competing trench narratives. By avoiding more explicit references to trench warfare, however, the blurb perhaps detracted from the book’s denunciation of the conflict; certainly the horror and squalor of the Western Front are not referenced. But by alluding to the novel’s broader themes, Aldington and Prentice still expounded a wider narrative that blamed the tragedy of the war on an older, pre-war generation. The blurb’s description of Aldington’s protagonist is equally significant. Winterbourne is described as ‘one of millions who accepted death as the immediate end to their youth. More sensitive than the generality of Englishmen he stands, nevertheless, as a true representative of a generation; his story is a monument to the dead’.36 This is evidently an attempt to broaden the book’s appeal – a suggestion that the novel encapsulates the common experience of war, and that it can perform a commemorative function. Although the blurb characterizes Winterbourne as an unusually sensitive artist, it implies that his untimely death in combat makes him typical of his generation. These are ambitious claims. Winterbourne is not an ‘everyman’. Rather, he is a largely insular character whose sensitivity and intellect leave him feeling distanced from his fellow soldiers.37 And while Winterbourne’s death in combat is crucial to the novel’s tragic form, as we have seen, most men did in fact return home. Winterbourne’s story was not representative, therefore, but this did not necessarily matter; it was in the commercial interests of Aldington and Prentice to present it as such, as many readers may have assumed that it was representative. Estimates in the interwar years suggested that around one million British men had been killed – a figure not much larger than more recent calculations – but the majority of the public may not have been aware of this. The development of a collective memory centred on death and mourning, rather than victory and survival, was also reflected in the shifting character of Armistice Day commemorations. By the end of the 1920s, the revelry which had often marked earlier occasions had been supplanted by a more sombre affair.38 The death of numerous fictional protagonists in combat, including Remarque’s Bäumer and Manning’s Bourne, also attests to the construction of this narrative. In emphasizing Winterbourne’s death, and its representativeness, therefore, the novel’s blurb helped to cement this myth of the war.

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Advertising was also crucial in positioning the novel. As with most elements of the publishing process, adverts reflected the often competing motivations of both author and publisher. On 22 September, three days after the book’s publication, Aldington complained to Prentice that the initial adverts for Death of a Hero were ‘too gentlemanly’, stating that ‘two things must hit the public eye: the title which in itself is a “selling proposition” and the name “Chatto and Windus” ’.39 Despite not wanting the novel to be pigeonholed as a war book, Aldington’s desire to emphasize the title of the novel – which alluded to its war theme – suggests he still saw a commercially exploitable market for these books. He was also clearly aware of the power of Chatto & Windus as a brand name and felt that being associated with such a reputable publisher would encourage sales. The firm’s association with challenging war books may have been a factor here. Prentice defended his initial marketing strategy, claiming that the adverts ‘certainly are mild, but I  think they did their work’.40 Disagreements between publishers and authors over matters of advertising were not uncommon at the time. Novelist and publisher Frank Swinnerton wrote in 1932 that ‘I have only once come across an author who was satisfied with the advertising for a book of his own’, before concluding that ‘the truth is authors do not understand the business of advertising’.41 Regardless, Prentice appears to have had considerable faith in the book, as Chatto & Windus advertised the novel widely in the national press in the weeks after its publication. Aldington also seems to have been placated, as on 25 September, he wrote approvingly that the advert in the ‘Publisher and Bookseller was the Platonic ideal of a good ad’.42 The advertisement in question was simple in design, but also bold and arresting (Figure 3.2). With its black frame and stark layout, it was also fittingly reminiscent of a death notice, pithily describing the work as ‘a long novel of peace and war, which is the epitaph of a generation’.43 This description reflects Chatto & Windus’s carefully balanced marketing approach, for it portrays the novel as both a war book and a thorough examination of the pre-war world. While the symbolism of the trenches is not directly promoted, the advert alludes to the broader myths of causality linking the pre-war world to the tragedy of the conflict itself. The advert also invokes the book’s commemorative qualities: it implies that Winterbourne’s story is representative, as if the experience of the trenches engendered a common bond among the generation who fought  – a further engagement with the narrative of the ‘lost generation’. Finally, the advert includes a small quotation of glowing praise from Gerald Gould’s review in The Observer, which illustrates how positive comments could be exploited for marketing purposes.

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Figure 3.2 Chatto & Windus advert for Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero in the Publisher and Bookseller, 27 September 1929.

The reception of Death of a Hero The critical response to Death of a Hero was mixed. Although Chatto & Windus had used a laudatory sentence of Gerald Gould’s review in their advertising, the article also expressed reservations. While Gould was impressed with the war sections, he disparaged the first two parts of the novel. He wrote that the

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‘indictment of pre-war society . . . is as feeble as the indictment of the war is fine’ and complained how in order to get to the excellent war passages ‘you must wade through (or skip) more than two hundred pages that are crude, petulant and . . . artistically worthless’.44 Arnold Bennett’s review in the Evening Standard expressed similar sentiments. He found Aldington’s strident critique of British society ‘often annoying’ and ‘sometimes exasperating’, but felt that ‘the war sections are on the whole superb’.45 Likewise, J.  C. Squire, also writing in The Observer, described the novel as ‘maddeningly irritating’, but believed ‘the war passages’, like those in Good-bye to All That, were ‘better than any of those in the German war novels’.46 This delineation between the British and German narrative of the war was, as we have seen, a distinctive feature of many war book reviews. It was not Aldington’s bitter denunciation of the war that had failed to impress critical readers, therefore, but rather his scathing attack on Edwardian and Victorian values. Critics welcomed certain elements of the war’s mythology, particularly those which highlighted the horror of the conflict. Myths which apportioned blame on British society, or implied the war was futile, however, were less welcome. Further sources of contention compounded the tepid response to Aldington’s novel. One anonymous reviewer in the Manchester Guardian, for instance, bemoaned the ‘revolting physical details to which we have become accustomed’. This review also implies, however, that graphic depictions of trench life, due to their frequency, have lost their ability to shock; in this respect there may have been a growing acceptance of Death of a Hero’s more gruesome imagery. But the reviewer also complained because ‘Mr Aldington has not concerned himself overmuch with his people . . . Creatures of the type of George Winterbourne are not worth atoning for’.47 Winterbourne, according to this reviewer, was not representative of the wider public, and was therefore fundamentally ill-suited to a novel aimed at a mass audience. Ralph Strauss similarly observed in the Sunday Times how Winterbourne was ‘hardly typical of the heroes who remained unsung’.48 But this in itself may not have been a barrier to commercial success. Few of the protagonists in the bestselling books of the boom could be considered ‘everymen’. An English audience may not have related to a German protagonist, such as Remarque’s Paul Bäumer, but this did not prevent All Quiet on the Western Front from becoming a major success. A more positive review came from Aldington’s fellow war writer Edmund Blunden in the TLS. Blunden was not entirely supportive of the book, complaining that there was ‘no coolness or detachment’;49 indeed, Aldington’s scathing satire is markedly different from Blunden’s subtle use of pastoral imagery in Undertones of

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War. Aldington himself was not fond of Blunden either, complaining to Prentice that he was not an ideal reviewer.50 Nevertheless, Blunden praised the war sections for ‘some of the finest and closest narration of the western front warfare that has been produced’.51 Prentice and Aldington had perhaps been unwise to divert attention away from the novel’s war book credentials. Again, it appears that Aldington’s war passages struck a chord with many reviewers, particularly while disillusionment was in vogue. Many readers evidently welcomed depictions of horror. The more accusatory and scathing elements in Aldington’s novel, however, were far from universally embraced, and Aldington and Prentice’s efforts to promote the book as a societal critique appear to have been misguided. Many readers were unwilling to accept responsibility for what they still saw as a necessary, albeit tragic, war. Aldington and Prentice had also justifiably harboured fears regarding the saturation of the war book market, as some reviewers were beginning to tire of the genre. For instance, St. John Ervine’s aforementioned article in the Daily Express, which lamented the ‘excess’ of war books, critiqued Aldington, among other authors.52 The memory of the war at this stage was disputed and it was little wonder that Aldington also fell victim to criticism. The commercial performance of the book reflected its varied critical reception. The interest of the libraries, as the prime purchasers of books, was of great importance here. On 19 September, the date of the book’s publication, the forecast was fairly promising: of the first impression, consisting of 5000 books, 1664 had already been sold. But whereas the booksellers had ‘come up to the scratch nobly’, Prentice complained that ‘some of the libraries on the other hand are hedging’. Mudie’s had taken 150, Smiths only 100 and Boots only fifty.53 The subscription libraries tended to cater towards a conservative, middle-class audience, promoting middlebrow works, with conventional, traditional themes and messages. Popular authors with the libraries included Ethel M. Dell, P. G. Wodehouse and Gilbert Frankau.54 Death of a Hero, on the other hand, attacked the very values the libraries upheld. Although depictions of horror had become fashionable, moreover, many middlebrow readers may have found them unpalatable. Other elements of the war’s mythology, particularly those that questioned the entire meaning of the war, would also probably not have aligned with the views of the typical subscription library customer. The novel’s espousal of these myths, combined with its bitter tone and controversial need for expurgation, certainly appeared to be hindering its wider distribution. For example, Hugh Walpole’s Book Society – which, as Nicola Wilson has argued, ‘epitomized and celebrated the middlebrow’55 – had rejected the novel due to its large number of ‘puritanical subscribers’, as Prentice scathingly put it.56

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Despite the initially lukewarm response from the libraries, sales had risen encouragingly to 3,600 by 2 October, but it was clear that the book could be performing better. As Prentice noted, the libraries continued ‘to hold aloof ’. The reason for this, Prentice mockingly surmised, was that they ‘are afraid of their subscribers coming in and waving sticks and umbrellas at them’.57 This trepidation may have stemmed from an opposition to the profane, but the expurgation had removed the potentially offensive words from the book, albeit rather noticeably. Aldington’s representation of the war, therefore, must also have caused concern. Library readers may have been willing to accept that the war had been horrific, but they were perhaps less willing to concede that the conflict had been a futile waste for which they were partly responsible. Sales did steadily increase, reaching the 9,000 mark by early December 1929. A French edition of the work was also arranged, and, according to Aldington’s biographer Charles Doyle, he was now earning around sixty dollars a day – an ‘undreamed of state of wealth!’58 Death of a Hero’s success, however, was modest compared to some other war books, and Aldington’s envy was palpable when he wrote to Prentice in December enquiring as to whether Good-bye to All That had really sold 30,000 copies.59 This is a plausible figure, and considerably more than Death of a Hero had sold. Prentice was also disappointed. He wrote to Aldington on 4 December admitting that the absence of ‘a big initial sale’ had ‘rather handicapped the Hero’ and instead began turning attention to Aldington’s next book, a collection of short stories about the war entitled Roads to Glory (1930). Aldington and Prentice had intended Death of a Hero to be both a scathing critique and a popular success, but the novel’s critical and commercial performance suggests they were unrealistically ambitious in their aims. Readers were increasingly accepting of a narrative of the war centred on death and horror, but they were not always willing to accept that the British war effort had been futile and morally worthless. This helps to explain why other war books, some of which were equally vitriolic, were more successful. Remarque may have evoked uncompromising battlefield images, but he portrayed the German war effort as futile, and it was German society, rather than British society, that he attacked. British readers could indulge in Remarque’s novel and believe that he was not indicting them for its horror. No such comfort existed when reading Death of a Hero. In an era during which commercial lending libraries, and their conservative, middle-class audiences wielded considerable influence in the book market, opposition was inevitable. With the benefit of hindsight, however, we can see that the book’s marketing should have played to its strengths, promoting it as a war novel. Although

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the popularity of trench narratives would soon abate, the public climate in September 1929 was still receptive to these themes. The early sections of the novel clearly detracted from its vivid Western Front climax, whereas Remarque’s work, in contrast, was more concise and distilled. Although commercially lucrative for Aldington, neither he nor Prentice could hide their disappointment. It was clear that Death of a Hero was to be no All Quiet on the Western Front.

Myth and memory in Testament of Youth Like Aldington, Brittain had attempted to write a book about the war on a number of occasions throughout the 1920s. These early drafts, however, had all been fictional narratives drawing on Brittain’s experiences to varying degrees. It was not until the height of the ‘war books boom’, after a number of other autobiographical accounts had proven successful, that she decided to write a factual account.60 Subtitled ‘an autobiographical study of the years 1900–1925’, Testament of Youth chronicles Brittain’s life from childhood through to her early thirties. She is critical of her stifling upbringing in Buxton, Derbyshire, and emphasizes the repressive restrictions to which middle-class women were subjected during the Edwardian era; her parents were unsupportive of her desire to go to university, and she had to overcome these difficulties in order to win a place at Oxford in 1914. The book centres, however, on Brittain’s experiences during the First World War. Drawing heavily on her diaries and correspondence, Brittain depicts her falling in love with her brother’s friend Roland Leighton, his departure to the front and her decision to leave Oxford in order to take up nursing in a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD).61 Brittain reveals the hardship, toil and often appalling injuries that confronted her as she nursed in London, Malta and France. During this time Brittain was serially bereaved. First, shortly after becoming engaged to Brittain, Leighton was killed in action. Later in the war, Brittain’s friends, Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, and finally her brother, Edward Brittain, were all killed too. It is from the poignant evocation of these multiple losses – from a female perspective – that Testament of Youth draws much of its power. Finally, Brittain narrates her return to Oxford after the war, her fledgling career as a writer and journalist, her work with the League of Nations Union and her marriage to the academic George Catlin. In doing so, Brittain shows how she became committed to the avoidance of war. It was also during the post-war period that Brittain’s growing awareness of the plight of the poor began to inform her socialist beliefs, while

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in her struggles for an education and career she became committed to feminist principles of gender equality.62 The desire to denounce war, however, was Brittain’s major motivation for writing Testament of Youth. In a letter written to her American publishers, Macmillan New York, Brittain enclosed a document detailing the points she felt should be emphasized in the publicity of the book. Brittain stressed that her conclusions were ‘based on personal experiences of sorrow, sacrifice and conflict which led her to seek for some philosophy of life that would save future generations from similar catastrophe’.63 Despite her emphasis on the personal impact of the war, Brittain had a clear political incentive for writing the book. In espousing her anti-war sentiments, she reinforces many of the narratives of the First World War that had begun to surface amidst the disillusionment of the ‘war books boom’ – particularly the notion that it was horrific, tragic and futile.64 Brittain’s close relationship with a number of men at the front, and particularly the letters she exchanged with Leighton and her brother, allow her to paint a picture of trench warfare – albeit from a nursing perspective – in similar terms to many of the male combatants who had published war books shortly before Testament of Youth. Brittain recalls how she became aware ‘of the futility of war between men who . . . bore no grudge against one another’, alluding to the commonality of war experience.65 Elsewhere, Brittain dismisses the Somme, a battle in which her brother participated, as an ‘ineffective orgy of slaughter’.66 Despite not having fought herself, Brittain therefore powerfully conveys many of the myths advanced in combatant accounts. The cultural historian Janet Watson argues that Brittain’s conception of the war as a pointless tragedy is a product of the post-war years. By contrasting the youthful enthusiasm of Brittain’s wartime diaries with the disenchantment of Testament of Youth, Watson claims that ‘Brittain’s disillusion and cynicism must, therefore, have crystallized later’. Watson asserts that despite Brittain’s best efforts to present her anti-war sentiments as originating in wartime, she was initially more supportive of it than her autobiography suggests. Brittain had, for example, been instrumental in persuading her father to allow her brother Edward to enlist, but given his death in combat, Testament of Youth understandably elides this issue.67 Yet Brittain does not entirely conceal the feelings of her younger self. Though she was selective with the evidence she took from her diary, she employs extracts in Testament of Youth to prove that she was beginning to question the conflict while it was taking place. After receiving a bleak letter from Roland in 1915, for example, she referred to the ‘horror piled on horror till one feels that one can

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scarcely go on any longer’. Brittain also draws attention to her previous pro-war attitude and admits that she would prefer to pay attention to extracts from her diary which support her post-war perspective. Having quoted a passage from her diary in support of the war, she concedes that ‘I prefer to think that my real sentiments were more truly represented by an entry written nearly a month later’. Here Brittain claimed it was ‘impossible . . . to find any satisfaction in the thought of 25,000 slaughtered Germans’.68 Brittain’s views were conflicted while the war was taking place, and she acknowledges this. While Brittain’s coherent anti-war stance owed much to post-war developments, it did begin to emerge during the conflict itself. Through her unashamedly selective approach to her diaries, Brittain not only depicts the war as futile, but also fosters the illusion that it was commonly perceived as such while it was taking place. This was not least because Brittain’s heavy use of diary extracts and letters allowed her to emphasize the book’s alleged factual accuracy. She urged Macmillan New York to draw attention to the ‘function of the book as an historical document’, noting that it ‘is illustrated by letters and diaries having historical as well as personal value’.69 Despite Brittain’s claims, it remains to be seen whether ‘history’ and life-writing can be reconciled. As Jeremy Popkin has argued, an autobiography, as a history of an individual’s life, appears to have much in common with the work of professional historians, but there are of course fundamental differences  – not least in the ‘inherently subjective’ nature of life-writing.70 Given her acknowledged selectivity with her source material, it was also rather disingenuous of Brittain to stress the book’s historical value. This presentation of myths as the ‘truth’, however, is crucial to their endurance. Despite the strength of Brittain’s anti-war convictions, Testament of Youth is not without nuance. While Brittain stresses the tragedy of the war, she does not deny its allure: This glamour, this magic . . . constitute the pacifist’s real problem . . . the challenge to spiritual endurance, the intense sharpening of all the senses, the vitalising consciousness of common peril for a common end, remain to allure those boys and girls who have just reached the age when love and friendship and adventure call more persistently than at any later time.71

Brittain’s willingness to concede that war could hold an attraction sets Testament of Youth apart from All Quiet on the Western Front, for instance.72 Moreover, while Aldington renders heroism redundant, Brittain admits that ‘war, while it lasts, does produce heroism to a far greater extent than it brutalises’.73 Ironically,

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pro-militarist authors and critics advanced similar arguments, but Brittain, of course, does not see these as reasons to defend war. Instead they are presented as obstacles the pacifist must overcome. Testament of Youth perhaps most forcefully articulates the myth of the ‘lost generation’. Brittain alludes to a distinct identity for herself and those born at a similar time, and attributes this directly to the war. In her suggested publicity for Macmillan New York she summarized the book as ‘not merely the story of an individual, but the story of a generation which was just growing up at the outbreak of war’.74 Similarly, in the book itself, she describes her cohort as ‘the War generation’, and portrays it as distinct from an older generation that had exploited it. Brittain also claims that it was around the time of the Treaty of Versailles when she began ‘already to suspect that my generation had been deceived, its young courage cynically exploited, its idealism betrayed’.75 The political machinations which characterized the peace treaties are set in contrast to the noble idealism Brittain’s cohort displayed upon the outbreak of the war. Brittain would also express a distinctly female perspective on the war, but here her generational critique echoes similar male indictments of the conflict, including Richard Aldington’s. Brittain also believed that the younger generations, whom she encountered upon her return to Oxford after the war, did not understand what the war had meant, and her picture of university life at this time is characterized by alienation as a consequence.76 Her desire to warn younger generations of the war’s horror provided a key motivation for Brittain, as she explained in her publicity document for Macmillan New York: ‘in the days to come our descendants will have made up their minds on the mutually exclusive issue of war and peace . . . There is only one thing that will help. That is the “revelations” left by the few articulate men and women’.77 As we shall see, in 1933, as fears of a future conflict began to surface, this was a topical concern: many felt that the best way to avoid war was to reveal its horror to the young. Testament of Youth, like Death of a Hero, also perpetuates the myth of a generation destroyed. Brittain’s personal story, of course, lends weight to this as she lost all the young men she was close to. Brittain’s conception of a ‘lost generation’ is undeniably elitist, however. Testament of Youth is less a memorial to an entire generation and more a lament for the loss of a particular portion of it:  those like her brother and fiancé who were privileged and well-educated. Reflecting on her initial inability to find an intelligent and talented husband in the early 1920s, Brittain claims that ‘it simply provided one proof after another that the best of their sex had disappeared from a whole generation’. In a similar fashion,

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she suggests elsewhere that the post-war world was worse off for ‘lacking first rate ability’.78 Brittain’s implication that the war had killed off the ‘best’, because these were the men who had the courage to fight, idealizes soldierly virtues in a manner that perhaps detracts from her pacifist credentials. Although most men – regardless of their talents – did in fact return, Brittain’s perception of the losses is understandable if we consider how they were distributed across the population. Jay Winter has shown that the notion of a ‘lost generation’ is in fact more apt if applied to the upper classes, where losses were proportionately far higher. Due to the heavy enlistment of men from the educated elite into the officer corps, these soldiers frequently served as subalterns. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the men whom Brittain knew and lost had all attended public school, had all been offered places at Oxford or Cambridge, and had all served as junior officers. Casualty figures suggest this was the most dangerous rank in the army, which is understandable, as it required men to lead from the front. To illustrate this point, Winter has demonstrated that as many as one in four men from Oxford and Cambridge universities died in the conflict. Losses were also concentrated among soldiers in their twenties, contributing to the sense of a ‘lost generation’ among men from this background and age group.79 But most privileged men did return, despite the high casualties, and many of course, such as the future Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, would go on to succeed in public life. Once again the tension between statistical evidence and personal experience is apparent. From Brittain’s individual perspective the ‘lost generation’ was a reality. But despite her claim to be writing ‘history’, the historical record has since proven Brittain’s narrative to be inaccurate. The myth nevertheless had great appeal for writers like Brittain, and, as the historian Robert Wohl has argued, ‘it provided an important self-image for the survivors from within the educated elite and a psychologically satisfying . . . explanation of what happened to them after they returned from the war’.80 By portraying themselves as distinctly talented, but victimized and psychologically tortured, writers like Brittain could explain away their post-war disappointments and come to terms with their bereavements. In common with other writers who depict life before and after the conflict, Brittain also contributes to the narrative of the war as a rupture in history. As in Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That and in Sassoon’s Sherston trilogy, the war is presented as a severe disruption to an otherwise insular life, from which both the authors, and society as a whole, emerge profoundly changed. In the publicity document explaining her motives, Brittain clearly articulated

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this belief: ‘the war is incomparably the most momentous thing that has happened to us or is ever likely to happen . . . It altered the world’s disposition more completely than any past event of comparable duration’.81 To illustrate this point in Testament of Youth, Brittain idealizes the year preceding the war, and reflects on the day she met Roland Leighton ‘as the one perfect summer idyll that I ever experienced, as well as my last care-free entertainment before the flood’.82 This evocation of the ‘Edwardian Summer’ is a powerful mythic device, which foreshadows the tragedy of the war, and creates a sense of innocence destroyed. As with the myth of the ‘lost generation’, it was primarily perpetuated by – and was probably most true for – the privileged classes.83 In Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, for instance, this trope is a product of Sassoon’s nostalgia for his rural upbringing. Brittain, however, appears to have been convinced the war was a caesura before it had even finished:  in Testament of Youth she quotes a letter to her mother from 1916, during which she opined that ‘the War will make a big division of “before” and “after” in the history of the world, almost if not quite as big as the “B.C” and “A.D” division’.84 Brittain evidently still felt this to be a perceptive – and marketable – comment when the book was published in 1933. Of course, the war did instigate great change, catalysing the crumbling of regimes and the collapse of Empires. Historians have also suggested that the war led to improvements in the lives of women,85 and the granting of the vote to all women over the age of thirty in 1918 is taken as an example of this.86 Testament of Youth, in part, fuels a narrative of female emancipation. Through nursing, Brittain contributed to the war effort and escaped the restrictions imposed on her by her family. After the war she gained a degree and pursued a career before considering marriage or motherhood. Brittain’s story, however, was atypical. Totalling around 45,000 in July 1917,87 nurses represented a small fraction of the female population, and most returned to the domestic sphere after the war to occupy traditional roles as wives and mothers.88 Nurses were also still engaged in what was considered a feminine activity, and did not transcend gender stereotypes in this respect. Some other women did take on traditionally male jobs such as working in munitions factories or on public transport, and for middle-class women this was perhaps an advancement. But many working class women had been toiling in factories before the war; for them such work was less of a novelty. Women also had to contend with lower pay than their male counterparts and the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act in 1919 forced them to vacate these roles for the returning soldiers. These long-term continuities should not be overlooked.89

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Brittain herself, however, did not claim the war had emancipated women. She reflects on how Leighton, having left Oxford to take a commission, had dismissed his undergraduate life ‘as scholastic vegetation’ by contrast. Brittain, still at Oxford at this point, was understandably upset by his remark: ‘I felt it altogether contrary to his professed feminism  – but then, so was the war; its effect on the women’s cause was quite dismaying’.90 Brittain once again draws on the personal to advance a broader historical argument. By requiring men to fulfil the essential, and exclusively gendered, role of the combatant, the war naturally created divisions between the sexes and led to an inevitable inequality of sacrifice; no matter how much women suffered or contributed, they could not claim to have risked their lives in the way men had. Brittain was left feeling inadequate. Brittain also felt the contribution of women to the war effort had been underappreciated. Her feminist motivation in writing Testament of Youth, therefore, was not to demonstrate the war’s role in emancipating women, but to compete with a memory of the conflict which had been drawn up on masculine terms. In her explanatory publicity document Brittain asked ‘why should these young men have the war to themselves?’, and noted ‘how little they reveal of what the war meant to women’. Brittain observed how in books like Journey’s End and Undertones of War women were entirely absent, while in the works of Graves and Remarque they were presented simply as wives and mothers. Unsurprisingly, Aldington’s misogyny riled Brittain the most, and in a critique of Death of a Hero, Brittain claimed that during the war ‘she knew women who were something other than dependent wives or mothers, or self-seeking parasites and prostitutes’.91 To be sure, men’s literature had overlooked the role of the women, but all the same, Testament of Youth was not the first of its kind: numerous books by women, which focused on the experience of women, had already been published, both during and after the war.92 Brittain herself acknowledged Mary Lee’s It’s a Great War (1929) and Mary Borden’s The Forbidden Zone (1929) in this document, but appeared unaware at this stage of Helen Zenna Smith’s Not So Quiet . . . Stepdaughters of War (1930) or Irene Rathbone’s We That Were Young (1932). Testament of Youth was by far the most successful of these, and has had a far more enduring impact on the memory of the war, but it was not unprecedented. The extent to which Brittain successfully conveyed the independence, contribution and sacrifice of women is debatable. Reflecting on her first few weeks as a VAD, Brittain recalls how she ‘had advanced at least one step nearer to Roland and the war’.93 By exposing herself to greater hardship, Brittain was attempting to experience vicariously Leighton’s suffering at the front. She

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presents her war work therefore as an act of deference to the supreme suffering and sacrifice of men, rather than a valid experience in its own right. The historian Gerard de Groot has even argued that Brittain’s evocation of the ‘lost generation’ myth ‘reinforces women’s helplessness and inferiority by attributing catastrophic consequences to the loss of a small group of men’.94 Yet, despite these flaws, Brittain does much to highlight the important contribution of women to the war effort, and in doing so she helped to expand and reformulate a memory of the war which had been heavily gendered until this point.

Taking the tide: Victor Gollancz and Testament of Youth When Victor Gollancz founded his eponymous publishing business in 1927, one of his primary goals was to use the firm as a platform for the dissemination of his left-wing political beliefs.95 In 1928, for instance, he had approached Siegfried Sassoon, suggesting he write an anti-war book on behalf of the League of Nations Union.96 Similar motivations evidently attracted Gollancz to Testament of Youth, and on 7 July 1932 he wrote to Brittain to express an interest in the book.97 He had heard from one of his authors, Phyllis Bentley, that Brittain was working on the text, and Brittain’s biographer Deborah Gorham has suggested that Brittain had cynically befriended Bentley in order to gain contact with Gollancz.98 Brittain certainly appears to have favoured Gollancz as publisher, promising him first look at the manuscript, despite interest from two other firms.99 By February 1933, with the book nearing completion, Brittain wrote to Gollancz admitting that she had already agreed a deal for the American publication of the book with Macmillan, but assuring him that he would be the preferred British publisher because ‘I think you would be sympathetic to its political and social ideas’.100 Having read the manuscript, Gollancz responded favourably, and agreed to publish the work.101 Gollancz’s political agenda was crucial in allowing him and Brittain to form a successful working relationship. His desire actively to seek out Brittain on Bentley’s advice illustrates his interest in publishing a book with a pacifist, feminist and socialist message. Similarly, Brittain’s desire for Gollancz to publish the book demonstrates just how important she felt a publisher with a sympathetic outlook would be. Despite his socialist views, Gollancz also possessed considerable commercial zeal. He had claimed that ‘the essence of publishing is to take the tide’, and his early successes were based less on his politics and more on his ability to give the public what it wanted. Indeed, Gollancz was one of the first publishers to

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capitalize on the ‘war books boom’, publishing Sherriff ’s Journey’s End in 1928. Gollancz would build on this success with numerous other bestsellers that were not about the war, and by 1933 his list included popular authors like Daphne du Maurier and Dorothy L. Sayers. Part of Gollancz’s success rested on his bold and innovative marketing techniques; whereas publishers’ advertising tended to be reserved in the 1920s, Gollancz used eye-catching double-page spreads in major newspapers. His dust-jackets were unique too, and consistently used an arresting yellow, black and magenta colour scheme so that they stood out on book shelves and created a distinct brand identity.102 This business acumen, as much as his political sentiments, would prove crucial in shaping Testament of Youth’s reception and ensuring its commercial appeal. Testament of Youth was first promoted in Gollancz’s spring catalogue, which described the book ‘as truly representative of the life of that generation of women which was just growing up when the war broke out’.103 Gollancz was therefore instrumental in reinforcing the book’s message, emphasizing the universality of Brittain’s experience and fostering the notion of a distinct generational identity. This was also shrewd marketing: it was beneficial for Gollancz to target a broad audience, and highlighting the work as a woman’s story, rather than another trench memoir, was a necessary tactic given the saturation of the war book market. Towards the end of 1930, the Publisher and Bookseller had noted a decline in the popularity of war books,104 and in 1931, in an address to fellow publishers, Geoffrey Faber observed how the ‘desire to look at the war, and see it at its very worst, has exhausted itself ’.105 Similarly, in early 1932, Jonathan Cape conceded in a letter to Robert Graves that war books were no longer popular.106 By 1933 the ‘war books boom’ had evidently passed, and Gollancz, aware of the need to ‘take the tide’, no doubt realized this. Differentiating the book was therefore essential. Gollancz’s fourth spring list dedicated more space to Testament of Youth and included a detailed blurb for the book, written anonymously by Brittain’s close friend and fellow author Winifred Holtby. This blurb would also be used for the book’s dust jacket. Despite acknowledging ‘the heroism of modern war’, the blurb referred to ‘the horror, the wastage, [and] the pity’, in a succinct distillation of the war’s emerging mythology. But what made Testament of Youth distinct, according to the blurb, was that no other books had ‘convincingly conveyed the grief ’.107 As in Gollancz’s previous catalogue, the book is presented as unique for recalling Brittain’s experiences as a woman. Yet by emphasizing grief, and by implication bereavement, the blurb also casts Brittain in the traditionally feminine role of the mourner, rather than portraying her as an active participant in the war.

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The blurb concludes by describing Testament of Youth as ‘a book for everybody. Its story seems only a more intense and concentrated version of common experience during these twenty-five years’.108 It fostered the illusion, therefore, that Brittain’s story was typical, when in fact it was exceptional due to her privileged background, her nursing experience and the disproportionately high number of loved ones she lost. Brittain, however, would frequently draw on the personal to make more general points about the war, and this presentation of atypical experience as representative has allowed literary representations like Testament of Youth to occupy a central position within the war’s cultural memory. As we have seen, Chatto & Windus had employed a similar tactic when marketing Death of a Hero. Whether or not Holtby was entirely responsible for this blurb is uncertain.109 Brittain felt that Holtby should remain anonymous, somewhat negating the benefit of having another well-known author writing the blurb. Without the need to attribute it to Holtby, however, Gollancz may have decided to intervene. Publishers would often amend blurbs even if they did not write them themselves. Certainly the original specimen blurb that Holtby wrote and a suggested blurb written by Brittain differ greatly from the final version. While Holtby’s original blurb made the moderate claim that the book would be ‘immensely interesting to all the women who are now coming into their own in politics and professions’,110 it did not make the bolder assertion that the book had universal appeal. As the promotional catalogue had made greater claims to the novel’s representativeness, Gollancz, eyeing a large market, may have contributed here. Gollancz also influenced the book’s reception though numerous advertisements in the national press, many of which employed copious quotations from well-known authors such as Storm Jameson, Vernon Bartlett and Ernest Raymond. Brittain had carefully compiled a list of authors to whom the book would be sent before publication, specifically so that positive comments could be collated and used in the marketing of the work. An advert in The Observer on the date of publication, 27 August 1933, used no fewer than eleven of these quotations from a wide selection of literary figures, both men and women, to create the sense of broad appeal (Figure 3.3). All the advertisements used bold, arresting lettering and continued unabated for the next few months. Gollancz exploited the entire front page of The Observer’s Christmas Literary Supplement to advertise the work,111 for example, and would continue the publicity into the New Year. Some of these directly engaged the myths the book conveyed. An advert for the third impression, for instance, concisely summarized the book as

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Figure  3.3 Victor Gollancz advert for Testament of Youth in The Observer, 27 August 1933.

‘pre-war, war, post war’, portraying the war as a definitive rupture between two epochs.112 The heavy advertising expenditure was in part a consequence of the book’s continuing success which, in proving there was a large audience for the work, had justified further investment.

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The reception of Testament of Youth The favourable response from many critics justified Gollancz’s advertising expenditure. Brittain’s advancement of the ‘lost generation’ narrative, for instance, struck a chord with reviewers. A  review in the New Statesman and Nation was titled ‘The “Lost Generation” ’, and acknowledged that ‘the loneliness of men and women who endured the war . . . will be soothed by sharing her memories’.113 Other articles made bolder claims to the book’s representativeness. The Bystander magazine effused how Testament of Youth ‘is one of the great books of a generation. Not of this generation, but of that one which melted all too soon’.114 The Week-end Review made a more forceful point: ‘it is [the] normality of Vera Brittain’s book which makes it so important as a document . . . she did not realise that she and her generation were being smashed up and killed . . . to uphold a system which they had scarcely thought about, but would have known as evil if they had’.115 This reviewer vehemently articulates the ‘lost generation’ myth, but also argues that this generation was deceived, exploited and coaxed into a war under false pretences. By extension, therefore, this appraisal conveys the futility of the conflict, implying that the values for which the war was fought were bankrupt. The articulation of such a view in the mainstream press demonstrates that vigorous denunciations of war had not disappeared, despite the fashion for war books having died out. As we shall see, the developing international backdrop fostered a mood of pacifism which Brittain and Gollancz knowingly facilitated. Not all reviewers, however, identified with Brittain’s notion of a homogenous ‘war generation’, and questioned the universality of her story. Margaret R. B. Shaw, writing in the New English Weekly, noted how Brittain creates the impression that she saw the ‘the common experiences that all of our generation passed through, before and after the war, as one who stands in isolation’.116 This is a perceptive comment. Much of Testament of Youth narrates Brittain’s sense of alienation. She suggests she was different from many girls her age before the war due to her intellectual ambitions, and she admits to having had little in common with her fellow nurses during the war.117 Similarly, the Manchester Guardian, though far less critical, also observed that Brittain’s was ‘not an average life, because the writer is one of the intellectuals, and because the tragedy in which the War enfolded her was high tragedy, passing the common run’.118 Due to her privileged background and education, and due to the scale of her bereavement, Brittain’s story was atypical. Nevertheless, many reviewers agreed with Brittain on the need to educate the young. Eric Gillett, writing in the London Mercury, advocated placing

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‘copies in the hands of every boy and girl of eighteen in this country’,119 while the author Storm Jameson, reviewing Testament of Youth in the Sunday Times, praised Brittain for her ‘realisation of the responsibility a shattered generation has towards its successors’.120 This attitude in part stemmed from the political climate when the book was published. Brittain and Gollancz may have been too late to take the tide of the ‘war books boom’, but the book was published just late enough to ride a new wave of public sentiment. As the New Statesman and Nation commented, ‘war disillusion has been followed by disillusion with the chances of peace’.121 The major source of this apprehension was the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, who had become chancellor of Germany in January 1933 – only seven months before the publication of Testament of Youth. Hitler’s ascension led to fears that another war could be on the horizon, and some readers welcomed Brittain’s pacifist message because of this. One reviewer, for example, agreed that the allure of war posed a grave problem for the pacifist cause, but noted ‘solve it we must, or the Hitlers of this world will solve it for us’.122 These anticipations of a future war played a crucial role in the development of the First World War’s mythology during this period. They encouraged people to view the last conflict unfavourably, for it appeared it might not be ‘the war to end all wars’ after all. Denunciations of war also became more popular, as many believed that this could dissuade a new generation from bearing arms.123 As David Reynolds has demonstrated, Britain ‘nurtured the strongest peace movement in the world’ during the 1930s, with the League of Nations Union (LNU), of which Brittain was a member, at the heart of this. While not all members of the LNU were completely opposed to the use of military force, the growing appeal of absolute pacifism was underscored by the establishment of the Peace Pledge Union in 1936, which had a membership of 118,000 by the end of that year.124 Brittain herself would become a member in 1937.125 Although many critics approved of Brittain’s anti-war convictions, Testament of Youth’s ambiguities allowed reviewers with rather different opinions to appreciate the book too. The Methodist Times and Leader, for instance, praised Brittain for not ‘painting the whole ghastly business of blood and slaughter as a welter of sadist cruelty’, and quoted Brittain’s admittance of the allure of war as evidence of this.126 A review in The Scotsman made a similar point, noting how ‘Brittain does not overlook the bright flashes of real heroism which . . . dispelled the gloom of those terrible years’.127 Testament of Youth does in fact dwell far more on the suffering and horror of war than it does on the positives, but the subtle nuances of Brittain’s work were evidently sufficient to satisfy some readers.

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Perhaps more curiously, some reviewers praised Testament of Youth while simultaneously espousing the necessity of the First World War, despite Brittain’s suggestions that it had been avoidable. One review, for example, criticized the young for dismissing the war as futile and praised Testament of Youth as an antidote to this: ‘it is talked of as if it were fought for nothing, due to senile incompetence and swashbuckling recklessness . . . The elder generation knows that is not so:  that the war was undertaken in the cause of liberty, justice, and honour . . . England has waged many foolish and unjust wars; but this was not one of them’.128 This is a surprising appraisal of Testament of Youth. While Brittain does explain her generation’s motives for going to war, and praises the courage and sense of duty exhibited by her contemporaries, she ultimately suggests the war was unjust, and that her generation, in their naivety, were exploited. Testament of Youth may have helped construct an anti-war narrative of the conflict, but the book’s reception was not consistent or uniform. The extent to which Brittain successfully advanced her feminist agenda is also open to debate. Janet Watson is sceptical, arguing that ‘where men’s narratives were presented as clear-eyed truth telling, Brittain’s representation of experience was coded as feeling . . . Instead of challenging the gender distinctions of the soldier’s story, ultimately Brittain fit neatly within its confines’.129 There is some truth to this. Through her focus on the sufferings of her brother and fiancé, Brittain reinforces the masculine trench narrative. Yet this supposedly ‘masculine’ environment could also undercut pre-war conceptions of manliness. The static and impersonal nature of trench warfare afforded few opportunities for individual heroism,130 and, just as many women adopted ‘masculine’ occupations on the home front, men in the trenches found themselves performing ‘feminine’, domestic roles as they cared for themselves and their comrades.131 The war therefore provided a powerful challenge to preconceived assumptions regarding gender, fostering new senses of identity. Perhaps as a reaction to this, however, many reviewers of war books sought to reinforce traditional ideals of masculinity and femininity. Some reviewers also cast Brittain in the conventionally feminine role of the mourner, just as the book’s blurb had. The Sunday Chronicle, for example, observed how ‘men have written of the horror and heroism of war, but it has come to a woman at last to write of its grief ’.132 In a far more critical response to the book, James Agate argued in the Daily Express that Testament of Youth was ‘marred by a great fault – inability to be content with the tragic and refrain from fussing about it. The reader is affected as at the sight of a woman crying in the street’.133 In this overtly misogynistic review, Agate does not

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even deem grief to be a legitimate response; the memory of the war, as in Death of a Hero, remains masculine territory. Though appraisals like this support Watson’s claims, this was not the typical response. Numerous reviews suggest that the book convinced readers of the validity of women’s war-work. Unsurprisingly, the feminist Women’s Journal praised Brittain for traditionally masculine virtues, describing Testament of Youth ‘as sane and informed’,134 but responses like this were not only advanced by writers with an overt feminist agenda. Another reviewer in the Sunday Chronicle, for instance, claimed that ‘Brittain shows how women’s new freedom was ushered in with hardship [and] grim anxiety’.135 This reviewer not only acknowledged the sacrifice of women, but also suggested that the war had helped to emancipate them. Similarly, in an especially glowing review, the author John Brophy noted how Brittain’s book was worthy of the compliments paid to ‘the other testaments left by articulate soldiers. And . . . there is never a trace of frivolity or facile emotion or superficial thinking, or any of the other supposed feminine weaknesses’.136 Testament of Youth therefore had the power to challenge gender stereotypes and prove that a woman’s record of war was as valid as a man’s. Although the ‘war books boom’ had passed, Testament of Youth was also a commercial success. By Christmas 1933, the book had sold 20,000 copies137 and was the most popular non-fiction book with members of the Times Book Club.138 Within three years sales totalled 57,000,139 and the book would continue to sell steadily for the next decade: by 1943, following the introduction of a cheap edition in February 1935,140 90,000 copies had been sold.141 These figures suggest that Brittain’s anti-war views chimed with public sentiment as fears of a future war began to surface. Perhaps the best gauge of public opinion, however, is the copious fan mail Brittain received, some of which was from ex-servicemen. One correspondent, for example, felt that Testament of Youth ‘mirrored the thoughts of millions’, and noted that the book ‘brought to me many memories of four years spent in incessant fighting’. As with many critics, this reader found Brittain’s story to be representative – further evidence that a distinct generational identity, and a sense of shared experience, was beginning to shape the war’s memory. This correspondent also reflected on the impact of the war on those who survived it:  ‘I often wonder if souls of great promise like Rupert Brooke, if spared, would not have been like some of the survivors, a little tired and faded by their survival’.142 The narrative of disillusionment had come to define the war for many. This reader suggests that even Brooke, a voice of glory and patriotism, would have become

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war-weary had he survived the conflict. Of course not all veterans came to reflect on the war negatively, but Brittain and many of her readers did. Brittain received numerous similar letters from veterans and was evidently pleased by them, as this response to a fan indicates: ‘I felt . . . it was something of an impertinence for a woman to attempt a war book, and I have been deeply moved by the many letters that I have received from ex-servicemen who were good enough . . . to tell me that . . . they believed the attempt to have been worthwhile’.143 Due to the dominance of male narratives, Brittain had initially been hesitant to write Testament of Youth, but her story evidently appealed to some ex-servicemen. Janet Watson, however, has argued that Brittain ‘captured popular empathy not because of her own risks and service, but because she was all alone at the end of it all’.144 Perhaps, through her veneration of male combatants in Testament of Youth, and her grief when they died, Brittain did do little more than reinforce a masculine narrative of the war. Yet this seems a cynical conclusion. Men were evidently beginning to recognize the important contribution made by women. The memory of the war was not only distilling into its core myths; it was also expanding to incorporate new narratives. Women responded to the book with equal enthusiasm. An ex-VAD nurse, clearly able to relate to the Brittain’s war service, claimed that ‘I felt an indescribable “something” in your mind strangely akin to my own’.145 This correspondent welcomed Testament of Youth because it finally gave voice to experiences which had been largely marginalized until this point. Women may also have identified with Brittain’s story for other reasons. Another correspondent, for example, empathized with Brittain’s ‘fight for education and a career’.146 Brittain may not have been typical, but her story appealed to women who had battled against patriarchal restrictions. Testament of Youth could therefore be read as an empowering narrative of emancipation, though it is unclear as to what extent this reader attributed such freedoms to the war. The centrality of the war to Brittain’s story, however, suggests that readers could associate the conflict with advanced rights for women, even if this had not been Brittain’s intention. Brittain also appealed to younger readers. One correspondent, who was twelve when the war broke out, wrote how it was ‘an entertaining excitement while it lasted, so I thought then. It is really only in the last few years that I have realised . . . how its horror will dominate the rest of my life’.147 The ‘war books boom’ played an important role in shaping the perceptions of a younger generation. As this reader indicates, the realities of war were often lost on children and it was not until the late 1920s that they realized what the war had entailed. Readers with less solidified memories of the conflict were also often the most

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receptive to disillusionment. In response to this correspondent, Brittain stated that the book was aimed at readers like him: ‘I wrote it specially for those too young to have had much experience of war in the hope that it would make them realise something of its horror and join in with all those who are trying to prevent another’.148 Brittain aimed to dissuade the young from glorifying the war; to do so meant portraying it in the starkest and most horrific terms possible. Another younger reader was only eighteen months old when the war broke out, and praised Brittain for making her ‘realize clearly and vividly what you suffered’. This correspondent stated the ‘whole of my generation owes you a great debt, & I hope very sincerely that we shall repay you by the fulfilment shown at the Oxford Union debate, at which I was present’.149 This debate, as we have seen, is often viewed as symptomatic of a growing mood of pacifism among the young during the 1930s, and Brittain evidently helped foster these sentiments. As this correspondent suggests, Testament of Youth was successful in satisfying a curiosity among those keen to understand what the conflict had been like. These readers were not necessarily typical of their generation, but their responses provide an insight into how Testament of Youth, and the myths it conveyed, were received among the young. Not all of Brittain’s correspondents were unreserved in their praise. H.  A. Jolliffe had attended school with the men Brittain had lost, and expressed his gratitude to Brittain for writing Testament of Youth. He had one important criticism, however: ‘you have rather allowed your tragic experiences to colour your picture of the war time . . . You and your circle were so much more capable of both thinking and feeling deeply than the average . . . The majority of fighting men during the war were prepared to devote their energies to winning it’.150 This is a salient point, one that many critics during the ‘war books boom’ made, and one that many historians make today. Not all individuals responded as sensitively to the horrors of war as Brittain and the canonical poets did. As Jolliffe notes, most men were determined to win the war – had everyone become disillusioned, they would not have done so. Brittain’s perspective was partly a product of the post-war years, and, as Jolliffe suggests, not everybody would come to look on it negatively in retrospect either.

Conclusion Both Death of a Hero and Testament of Youth advanced the mythology of the First World War, presenting the conflict as a futile and wasteful betrayal of

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youthful idealism. Both texts, moreover, played an integral role in constructing the narrative of the ‘lost generation’. Death of a Hero centres around the demise of its protagonist, whom Aldington presents as an ‘everyman’, representative of a generation cut short in its prime. Similarly, while written from a female perspective, Brittain’s depiction of her multiple bereavements also reinforces the impression that a cohort of young men was needlessly wiped out on the battlefields of Western Europe. But this narrative of the First World War did not simply arise from a growing feeling of disillusionment among authors like Brittain or Aldington, or from a demand for such literature among the reading public. Rather, it was shaped equally by the interests of publishers, as the marketing strategies of Charles Prentice and Victor Gollancz illustrate. Both publishers were sympathetic to their authors’ viewpoints, and both reinforced the supposed universality of their stories. Yet Prentice and Gollancz were also astute businessmen, in-tune with the sentiments of the reading public and aware of the need to differentiate their products. It was this commercial acumen that ensured the broader dissemination of their authors’ messages. Product differentiation was of particular significance for Testament of Youth. What set the work apart from many of its competitors was that it married its anti-war manifesto with a feminist challenge to the masculine narrative of the conflict. Indeed, Testament of Youth was in part a response to the misogynistic portrayal of women in Death of a Hero. Brittain presented an undoubtedly robust argument in this respect, helping to expand the memory of the war beyond the trenches of the Western Front. The reception of both texts, however, again demonstrates that the memory of the war remained contested. Disillusionment no doubt held appeal, but it was not universally accepted. Timing was also critical. Aldington’s moderate success owed much to the wave of enthusiasm for trench narratives that attended the ‘war books boom’. Brittain may have been too late to ride the crest of this wave, but she did exploit an emergent pacifist sentiment during the 1930s. As fears of a future war began to surface, Brittain struck a nerve, helping to foster an antiwar attitude among a younger generation of readers. The public’s fears, of course, would be realized, and the onset of another world war would have a significant impact on the way the Great War was remembered over the subsequent decades.

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The War to End All Wars? Literature and Memory, 1939–1949

In The Great War and Modern Memory Paul Fussell identified ‘a kind of backwardlooking typical of war’, and argued that ‘everyone fighting a modern war tends to think of it in terms of the last war he knows anything about’.1 In 1939, this ‘last war’, for most Britons, was the Great War. Given Fussell’s remarks, we might expect the memory of the First World War to loom large during the 1940s, but few cultural products relating to the conflict from this decade have entered the canon. As Fussell suggests, however, the Great War was often used as a reference point for those seeking to understand the Second, and, in the process, the nature and meaning of the First World War was reconsidered. The impact of the Second World War on attitudes to the First would also determine how the Great War would be imagined and mythologized in the succeeding decades. Not only were existing myths reinforced and contested during this period, but new myths were also created. The Second World War had a severe impact on the British book trade. Whereas over 17,000 new titles had been published in 1937, this had dropped to little more than 6,000 by 1943. Shortages of manpower, raw materials, fuel and transport placed intense constraints on the industry, inevitably restricting the supply of books.2 Victory in 1945 did not immediately put an end to these troubles either, with paper rationing continuing until 1949. Yet there was no shortage of demand for books during the 1940s, and literature continued to play an integral role in British life. Readers turned to books to understand the war, to escape from the grim realities of the present, to relieve boredom during the blackouts or to alleviate the monotony of military life.3 Some of these books would provoke reflection on the previous world conflict. This chapter therefore begins by examining the cultural reputation of existing texts, assessing the extent to which they were read and how readers responded to them during the Second World War.

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I then discuss a selection of new works published during this period that address the legacy of the First World War, demonstrating how a variety of writers, many of whom we have already encountered, engaged with the memory of the conflict. Finally, I examine the reception of these texts, and consider how popular attitudes to the Great War may have shifted in the wake of renewed hostilities with Germany.

‘Books on the last war’ During the Second World War, and particularly amidst the bombs of the Blitz, many readers may have avoided books about the Great War. Scholars have suggested that reading about this ‘last war’ was an unnecessary diversion from the more pressing concerns of the present moment.4 Yet, rather than a sudden decline in interest in First World War literature, initially the reverse is evident. In 1939 and 1940 a Mass Observation investigation into library borrowing patterns revealed an increased desire to read about the previous conflict. On 31 October 1939, for example, librarians at Fulham Central Library in London reported that readers were borrowing a ‘terrific number of books on the last war. 12 such books were issued yesterday alone’.5 Another report from 1939 revealed a similar trend, noting how ‘one undoubted result of the war has been to turn readers again to books dealing with the Great War’.6 It appears that in their desire to understand and prepare themselves for the new conflict, readers looked for a precedent in the literature of the First World War. No demographic breakdown of the readers is provided in this investigation, but, just as younger readers with few memories of the first conflict were often drawn to this literature during the 1930s, so too may they have accounted for this demand at the onset of the Second World War. With little idea of what the new conflict would entail, reading about the Great War offered helpful, if ultimately misleading, clues. In some instances the investigation recorded the specific books readers were borrowing. Bridgewater Library in Somerset, for instance, observed that ‘since the war there is a revival in the reading of war books, particularly Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, and such novels as Ernest Raymond’s “Tell England” and Zweig’s “Case of Sergeant Grischa” ’.7 These three books reflect a broad array of literary responses, and are not indicative of any one perspective or area of interest. Raymond’s Tell England, as we have seen, was an immensely popular, traditional novel of the early 1920s, while Zweig’s account was more in keeping with the disenchantment of the ‘war books boom’. The popularity of both

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books suggests that a balance of perspectives on the war persisted throughout the 1930s. The disillusionment of the ‘war books boom’ had not entirely usurped the appetite for more glorifying representations of the conflict. In fact, many readers may not have had coherent conceptions of the Great War, but were randomly turning to its literature in order to understand the current conflict. Particularly popular was the work of T. E. Lawrence, which was referenced in a number of reports. Hampstead Library in London, for example, also affirmed his popularity, noting how his collected letters were in ‘constant demand’,8 while the North Athenaeum Library in Barnstaple, Devon, reported that Seven Pillars of Wisdom ‘has rarely been left long on the shelves since its publication in 1935’.9 Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence’s autobiographical account of his time serving as a soldier in the Middle East, helped to fuel its author’s heroic ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ persona. In this sense, and with its romantic, escapist possibilities, the account contrasts markedly with disenchanted Western Front narratives.10 While it had been popular since 1935, the fact that readers continued to borrow the book regularly into 1940 suggests that an interest in the First World War was not immediately quelled by the onset of the new conflict. As the Second World War continued, interest in First World War literature did begin to decline, particularly as Britain’s civilian population became increasingly embroiled in the conflict. On 14 September 1940, the librarian at Stepney Public Library in east London reported that borrowers were ‘reading lighter stuff. This is a district where a lot of heavy reading is done, but not since the raids began in earnest’.11 And when summarizing reading habits during the second half of 1940, Mass Observation noted that ‘there is a tendency towards light and easy reading . . . People say they want something to take their minds off the present situation’.12 Katie Halsey’s recent study of reading habits during the Second World War similarly reveals a desire among many readers to avoid war books in favour of lighter works.13 Evidently, as the severity of the war became apparent, readers were more likely to read for escapist reasons. As they had done during the First World War, men in the forces also turned to books in order to stave off boredom, yet it is not clear how frequently the First World War featured in their reading. Although a Mass Observation report from the Twelfth Infantry Brigade headquarters listed Mottram’s Spanish Farm novels and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms among what it deemed its ‘representative books’,14 other reports give a different impression. These remarks from an artillery officer may provide a more accurate summary of reading habits: ‘the average man on a gun site reads very little . . . I  don’t think the men find the ability to concentrate on anything much, even the more educated men . . . They

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want something very light, and slightly pornographic to relieve them . . . I feel it’s a form of escape’.15 This report is corroborated by Vernon Scannell’s autobiography The Tiger and the Rose, which recalls his time in the army as a young man. Scannell had a keen interest in Great War literature as a boy, but upon joining the army he modified his behaviour in order to blend in with his fellow soldiers in the ranks: ‘I deliberately suppressed that part of myself that I most valued. I became ashamed of my interest in literature, ideas, and the arts . . . I did not read anything except the occasional thriller or newspaper’.16 If a man with keen literary interests felt this way, it seems unlikely that the voracious reading of Great War literature was common among the ranks during the Second World War. Nevertheless, First World War literature could be a source of inspiration for combatants, and men may have looked to the literature of the last war in order to understand their current position. Joanna Bourke, for example, has noted that during the major conflicts of the twentieth century, ‘boys and men devoured the romantic, military literature of the preceding war’.17 Samuel Hynes, in his discussion of soldiers’ memoirs, provides the example of an RAF pilot and his friends ‘who hunted bookshops for copies of V. M. Yeates’s Winged Victory and shared them with squadron mates’.18 Yeates’s 1935 novel was based on his experiences as a fighter pilot during the First World War, and was in keeping with the disillusionment popular during the ‘war books boom’. Its attraction for these men, however, who had chosen to join the RAF, probably lay less in its denunciation of the war and more in its alluring depictions of the excitement and romance of flying. The Second World War is not always known for producing poetry in the same quantity, or of the same quality, as the previous conflict. Although many highly acclaimed poets – such as W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot – were published during this period, they were not presented as ‘war poets’. During the early years of the second conflict, for instance, Robert Graves had been ‘asked to explain as a “war poet of the last war” why so little poetry has so far been produced by this one’. In response, he suggested that ‘ “war poet” and “war poetry” are terms used in World War I and perhaps are peculiar to it’.19 But combatants did write acclaimed poetry during the Second World War.20 One of the most famous of these, Keith Douglas, was clearly influenced by Great War literature. As we have seen, Douglas had avidly read the war poets while at school and this interest was no doubt sustained when Edmund Blunden taught him at Oxford. In his poem ‘Desert Flowers’, for example, Douglas humbly concedes that ‘Rosenberg, I only repeat what you were saying’.21 But despite Douglas’s debt to the poets of the First

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World War, his work did not reinforce their messages, or contribute to the idea that war was futile. Rather, the contrasting nature of Douglas’s war spawned a different outlook. His biographer Desmond Graham notes how Douglas ‘made no attempt to take up the protests of the Great War poets . . . He was not like Owen “a pacifist with a seared conscience”. Had his war been less mobile and had it seemed as ideologically pointless as Owen’s, he might have become one’.22 While Douglas may have sympathized with Owen’s perspectives, he did not adopt them himself in relation to his own war experiences. As Graham suggests here, the Second World War was very different from the First. Not only did Douglas not experience the static degradation of the trenches, but his war also appeared less morally ambiguous. With an undisputed reason for fighting the Second World War, there was less incentive to write protesting poetry. Owen’s poetry, however, was still well received during this period, and his stature, which had been greatly enhanced during the interwar years, was sustained throughout the renewed conflict with Germany. In 1941, for instance, The Listener dedicated an article to the theme of war poetry throughout the ages, noting how ‘towards the end of the last war there were times when all sense of its idealism and purpose were submerged in the nausea of its slaughter, and filth, and boredom. In such a mood all activity seemed futile mockery . . . Wilfred Owen had this bitter experience, when one of his men was killed. Out of it grew his poem “Futility” ’.23 This recognition of the despair and futility in the work of Owen, and the intimation that this was a valid response to the growing horrors of the Great War, underscores the developing influence of a collective memory centred on disillusionment. Nevertheless, as illustrated by Keith Douglas’s poetry, an appreciation of Owen, and a recognition of his importance, did not necessarily mean that the latter’s message could be applied to the Second World War. Writing in the TLS in January 1941 Lord David Cecil highlighted Brooke and Owen as the two key, albeit contrasting, poetic voices of the Great War, yet questioned the relevance of their work to the current conflict. Cecil dismissed Brooke, whose ‘passionate fighting spirit’ and naïve idealism were no longer deemed appropriate, but he also doubted the value of Owen’s ‘passionate pacifism’: To be a pacifist in the face of Hitler is not only to court one’s own annihilation, but to help the establishment of a system whose first principle it is to preach the virtue of fighting. Such poetry as Owen’s written now would seem positively traitorous, the work of a fifth columnist out to undermine the morale of our troops.24

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Clearly an anti-war perspective was difficult to apply to the circumstances of the Second World War. Yet consistent references to Owen as an exemplar suggest that his reputation was increasingly secure, if only in literary circles. An article in The Times in 1943, for example, reported on the British soldiers’ ‘propensity for writing verse’, but noted that this was not because ‘the desert blossoms with war poets of the calibre of Wilfred Owen, but that simply men . . . when they have nothing to do turn naturally to scribbling’.25 Owen’s work, therefore, could now be considered the benchmark against which other war poetry was measured. While his contemporary applicability might be dubious, his literary merit was undisputable. The immediacy and vividness of Owen’s poetry, combined with his sophisticated literary allusions and mastery of rhyme and pararhyme, were all factors in securing Owen’s reputation.26 Moreover, commentators did not call into question the validity of Owen’s perspective with regard to his war. Rather, readers accepted Owen’s poetry as an appropriate response to a markedly different conflict. Without such ideological clarity and such a tangible threat to domestic security, the First World War, unlike the Second, may have appeared more futile, more horrific, than it had before. The lack of criticism of Owen’s work at this stage may help to explain why his poetry increasingly came to be seen as the ‘right’ response to the First World War, while its alleged futility was further confirmed by the new war. Despite the interruptions and distractions of the Second World War, the poetry of the previous war was also anthologized during this period. The first example was An Anthology of War Poetry, edited by the poet and critic Julian Symons, and published under Penguin’s Pelican imprint in 1942.27 Introduced in 1935 by Allen Lane, Penguin Books aimed to publish high-quality fiction in an affordable paperback format, with the aim of making this literature accessible to a mass audience. The Pelican imprint, launched in 1937, intended to do the same with non-fiction, academic titles. This concern for accessibility also informed Symons’s rationale when compiling the anthology. Its starting point, Symons noted, was the year 1500, for to make earlier poems ‘intelligible’ would have required him ‘to make alterations and put upon the reader a burden of notes’.28 The book itself – slim, light and pocket-sized – was also accessible to a broad readership, including young men serving in the army. Indeed, Penguin played an important role in providing books for the troops during the Second World War.29 In his preface, Symons assures his reader that ‘a good poem may be written about war from any possible attitude, that of Rudyard Kipling or Wilfred Owen’.30 It is therefore quality, rather than ideology, according to Symons, that

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guides his choice of poems, all of which are arranged chronologically, with sections dedicated to major wars in British history. First World War poets feature heavily, and, in accordance with Symons’s claims, reflect a range of positions on the war, including the patriotism of Rupert Brooke, the ambivalence of Edward Thomas and the bitterness of Wilfred Owen. Despite this, however, Symons has privileged the disillusioned works which dominate the canon today. Owen, for instance, is the most heavily featured of the First World War poets, with five poems. Sassoon, with four poems, is not far behind. Owen’s prominence in this paperback aimed at a mass audience again illustrates that he was central to the canon by the 1940s. Symons, however, notes his desire to showcase less well-known poems in the preface to the anthology,31 and the Owen poems that do make the collection – ‘Cramped in that funnelled hole’, ‘Greater Love’, Mental Cases’, ‘Inspection’ and ‘Smile, Smile, Smile’ – are perhaps not his most anthologized works today.32 These are also not Owen’s most vehement denunciations of the war, but together they do give voice to both the pity and bitterness that pervades much of his poetry, depicting the filth and misery of trench warfare, and, in some instances, denouncing the war as a wasteful betrayal of young lives. Symons does not cast judgement on the validity of such a perspective, and nor does he make comparisons between the two world conflicts, but his inclusion of these poems, alongside similarly inclined poems by Sassoon, reflects the increasing dominance of a disillusioned narrative of the war. First World War poetry was also collected in an Anthology of War Poetry 1914–1918, edited by Robert Nichols and published by Nicholson and Watson in 1943. A  soldier-poet himself, Nichols had served on the Western Front, publishing a number of verse collections during the conflict.33 The anthology’s preface takes the form of a conversation between Nichols and his friend Julian Tennyson, a twenty-four-year-old man about to serve in the Second World War. Nichols uses their discussion to justify his choice of poets stating, in a similar vein to Symons, that he ‘indulged in no propaganda either for or against war and made poetic merit the sole criterion of choice’ when compiling the anthology.34 This aim to depoliticize and demythologize the selection by avoiding a direct denunciation or defence of the war is reflected in his choice of poets: a broad range of voices is represented, from the patriotism of Brooke and Grenfell, to the disillusionment of Sassoon and Owen. Whether or not the selections are based purely on literary merit is open to debate, however, and some of Nichols’s choices are questionable. Key poets like Edward Thomas and Isaac Rosenberg are absent, whereas largely forgotten poets

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of the war such as William Noel Hodgson and Edgell Rickword are represented. Nichols does hail Owen, however, as one of the greatest poets in the collection – further evidence of his already canonical status. Nichols argues that in Owen’s poetry the ‘passion of shared suffering finds it most perfect expression’, before suggesting that these poems ‘continually approach closest to the tragic. Without universality the tragic cannot arise’.35 Nichols therefore praises Owen for his expression of the commonality of war experience and the shared suffering that war engenders. Yet Nichols does not assert the futility of the First World War: ‘in a difficult situation a thorough understanding of its roots . . . is often helpful. Though we may not be reconciled to necessity thereby, we at least do not . . . confuse fatality with futility’.36 An admiration for Owen’s poetry did not necessarily necessitate a pacifist perspective. As was the case with Keith Douglas, Nichols appreciated Owen’s literary value, without necessarily subscribing to his ideology. This is reflected in the four poems Nichols chooses for the collection:  ‘Apologia Pro Poemate Meo’, ‘Spring Offensive’, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and ‘Greater Love’.37 All of these poems are primarily a lament for the suffering of the troops, rather than a direct attack on the values underpinning the war, unlike, for example, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. Nichols’s stance reminds us that while most veterans and commentators agreed that the war had been horrific, they did not necessarily equate this with a belief that the war had been futile or founded on invalid principles.38 In fact, Nichols’s preface suggests that the onset of the Second World War has hardened his stance in support of the last war. He opposes the ‘passive resistance to the bearing of arms on any ground whatever’, before admitting that he has ‘never suffered from the illusion that the German people were or are very much like ourselves’.39 For Nichols, the Second World War proved that Germany was an inherently belligerent nation; Britain was therefore right to go to war in 1914, even if this had failed to curb German aggression in the long term. Despite Nichols’s penchant for Owen, therefore, his perspective does not reflect a memory centred on disenchantment. If there is a propagandistic element to Nichols’s selection, it appears to be founded on a desire to justify the two world wars. While the anthology is not structured to convey a particular narrative – the poets are organized alphabetically – Nichols’s decision to use his own poem ‘Epic Wind’ as the epilogue to the book further underscores his perspective. Its closing lines, ‘Blessed be those for England died, Blessed by those for her shall live’,40 certainly dispel any notion of futility. But Nichols’s stance towards Germany seems to have coexisted with recognition of Owen’s literary merit and an admiration for his evocation of suffering.

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The onset of the Second World War evidently far from diminished interest in Owen’s poetry. Rather, Owen retained his position within what Aleida Assmann would describe as the ‘cultural working memory’ of the First World War. The enhancement of Owen’s reputation during the interwar years was consolidated during the 1940s, with anthologists, poets and critics all continuing to hold his poetry in high regard. This was partly because Owen’s literary merits could be divorced from his ideology. Even if Owen’s evocation of futility could not be applied to the contemporary conflict, his poetry could still be admired.

The First World War in 1940s literature While few books published in the 1940s dealt exclusively with the First World War, the conflict did not disappear entirely from view. A number of writers who had experienced the last war would continue to tackle the subject to varying degrees. Richard Aldington and Siegfried Sassoon, for instance, whose works had been so influential during the ‘war books boom’, published autobiographies during this period. Aldington reflects on the war in his autobiography Life for Life’s Sake (1941); Sassoon does the same in Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920 (1945). In both accounts perceptions of the earlier conflict are refracted through the lens of the Second World War, providing an insight into how these veterans’ memories, and the broader popular memory of the war, had evolved. Fiction from the 1940s affords similar insights. As the literary critic Victoria Stewart has demonstrated in her survey of novels published during this period, ‘comparisons between the First World War and Second World War during the 1940s had an effect not only on the current conflict, but also on how the First World War was itself conceived and memorialised’.41 Below I also analyse three of these novels, all written by authors discussed earlier in this book: Vera Brittain’s Account Rendered (1945) and Born 1925 (1948); and Gilbert Frankau’s Michael’s Wife (1948).42 Discussions of the legacy of the First World War were not confined to fiction and memoir, however, and nor were they solely the preserve of writers who had served in the conflict. Noel Coward’s play, This Happy Breed (1942), is similarly worthy of consideration, and not least because its popularity is indicative of contemporary sentiments. Discussed alongside each other, the writing and reception of these works further reveals how collective memories of the First World War evolved during the 1940s. Typical of these works is an avoidance of direct combat depictions. In Siegfried’s Journey, for example, Sassoon refrains from depicting trench warfare,

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as neither he nor his publishers, Faber, wanted a repetition of scenes rehearsed elsewhere. The third instalment in a trilogy of autobiographies, including The Old Century and Seven More Years (1938) and The Weald of Youth (1942), Siegfried’s Journey covers ground not addressed in the semi-fictional Sherston trilogy, which consists of Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928), Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930),43 and Sherston’s Progress (1936). Despite traversing the final two years of the First World War, it does not revisit Sassoon’s military experiences. This was a particularly pressing concern for Faber as the latter two works in the Sherston trilogy overlapped chronologically with Siegfried’s Journey. In the blurb to the book, Faber therefore assured readers ‘there is no repetition of anything he has already said’.44 Sassoon also makes clear his intention not to revisit his front-line experiences: ‘I am thankful that I do not have to drag my mind through the details again’.45 Sassoon presents the writing of his memoirs here as a traumatic experience, but also, by implication, a necessary, cathartic process. These memories, now they have been put to paper, have been conquered; they no longer need to be revisited. Sassoon also suggests that these experiences are too traumatic to be revisited, however, and he thereby reinforces a developing narrative of the war: that it was indescribably horrific. A similar perspective is evident in Aldington’s Life for Life’s Sake, which was published in the USA, by Viking Press, and arose from a number of articles he had written for the Atlantic Monthly while living in the United States. While the book was not published or reviewed in Britain, and was unlikely to have been read widely there, it too provides a revealing glimpse into how a veteran’s perceptions of the First World War were modified in relation to the new conflict. Aldington’s account covers his life from childhood through to the middle of the 1930s and is primarily concerned with documenting his literary career. Like Sassoon, Aldington also needed to avoid the repetition of material used elsewhere, for his army experiences had been partly documented in Death of a Hero. Aldington therefore excuses himself for not depicting combat, admitting ‘I don’t want to . . . face the first war over again even in retrospect’. Again, the First World War is conspicuous through its absence, with Aldington’s reticence suggestive of its traumatic nature. But Aldington alludes to another reason, beside traumatic memories, for his refusal to dwell on his combat experiences: ‘with another worse war devastating the earth as I write – and how futile it now seems to write at all – the whole thing becomes unbearable’.46 In the light of the Second World War, the perceived tragedy of the last war increases. The traumatic experiences that Aldington refers to appear to have been vain, and the First World War appears even more futile and tragic than it did before. Aldington also observes

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that it is not just the First World War that appears futile; now even the act of writing about it seems pointless too. The First World War was not universally felt to have been a futile tragedy, however. The growing disenchantment of the interwar years did not entirely eradicate more positive interpretations of the war, and fictional reflections on the conflict continued to advance a range of perspectives. Noël Coward’s play, This Happy Breed,47 for instance, traced the varying fortunes of the veteran Frank Gibbons and his family over the course of the interwar years, advancing a conservative, patriotic perspective. Coward wrote most of the play during the summer of 1939, completing it shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, but it was not performed until 1942. With Coward writing the play on the eve of war, and with audiences not viewing it until the early 1940s, This Happy Breed can therefore be considered wartime work. In this sense, the play’s reflections on the Great War, which tend to be framed in terms of pride and national duty, are also shaped by the concerns that attended the Second World War. Coward’s exact views regarding the Great War are difficult to gauge. Born in 1899, he had not fought in the conflict, although he was conscripted into the army in 1918, narrowly avoiding service abroad due to a health condition. In fact Coward had actively avoided conscription, and had hated his time in the army. Despite this, and despite having keenly read Sassoon’s poetry collection CounterAttack, Coward’s biographer Philip Hoare has argued that Coward’s aversion to fighting had less to do with any political convictions, and more to do with ‘an instinct for self-preservation’. Nevertheless, Coward did address the Great War’s legacy in a play of 1931 entitled Post-Mortem, which he had been inspired to write after playing Captain Stanhope in a production of Sherriff ’s Journey’s End. Post-Mortem was a bitter and disillusioned piece that espoused the futility of war, but the extent to which Coward truly harboured the anti-war convictions expressed in the play is debatable. Although it was published in 1931, he decided not produce it, and the play was never performed during his lifetime. As Hoare has suggested, one of Coward’s major motivations for writing it may simply have been that such works were in vogue at the time. Indeed, Cavalcade (1931), the play Coward did choose to produce in the same year, contrasted markedly with Post-Mortem and offered a patriotic celebration of establishment values. From hereon, Coward’s plays, including This Happy Breed, struck a more reactionary note.48 Set entirely in the Gibbons’s South London home, This Happy Breed reveals how the various political and social developments of the 1920s and 1930s intrude into the domestic environment of a lower-middle-class family. War – including

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the legacy of 1914–18 and the anticipation of 1939, is a near-constant presence. In Act 1, Scene 1, set in 1919, the memory of the war is inevitably fresh, and Frank’s wife Ethel admits to her continual fear during the conflict that he might have been killed: ‘there was a chance every minute of every day for four years and don’t you forget it’. Frank, however, reflects more positively on the war years, stressing ‘that I went to war because I wanted to’ and admitting he would probably do it all again. Frank’s pride in voluntarily fulfilling his duty, and his suggestion that he enjoyed his war experiences, is of course a far cry from the narrative of disillusionment. In Act 1, Scene 3, set in 1926, Frank again reflects on the war, this time with his son Reg: ‘I belong to a generation of men, most of which aren’t here any more, and we all did the same thing for the same reason, no matter what we thought about politics’.49 Despite Coward’s articulation of the ‘lost generation’ myth here, there is not a hint of futility. For Frank, serving one’s country is an unquestionable duty that transcends politics. Frank’s attitude to the First World War is also revealed through his interactions with his neighbour Bob, a fellow veteran whom Frank had known and fought alongside in 1915. War was no doubt perilous for them:  Frank had a ‘small ‘ole though me leg’ and Bob was gassed, but nostalgia, rather than trauma, characterizes their reminiscences. In Act 2, Scene 2, set in 1931, the two return home drunk following a dinner with other veterans, and reflect with pride on their war experiences. Frank recalls, ‘with a tug of the ‘eart strings, the hardships and perils we endured together’ and announces that ‘My old regiment’s the finest in the world’.50 While Coward demonstrates that the war may have been dangerous and unpleasant, he acknowledges that many veterans continued to view it favourably during the 1930s. The comradeship that endured during testing circumstances is romanticized rather than rejected by these characters. Despite the ‘war books boom’, and the impending onset of a second conflict at his time of writing, Coward has not allowed disillusionment to colour his narrative. Gilbert Frankau was no different. In the epilogue to his memoir Self Portrait: A Novel of His Own Life – published in 1940, but completed a few days before the outbreak of the Second World War  – Frankau reaffirms his faith in the validity of the First World War. In a thinly veiled criticism of Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, Frankau implies that politicians, through allowing Britain to slide towards another war with Germany, have dishonoured the dead of the first conflict: ‘This time, if this thing must be, let all who survive see to it that no puling politician betray our victorious dead’.51 Despite the suffering that was to follow, moreover, Frankau did not lose his belief that warfare could be a valuable experience. His novel Michael’s Wife, published towards the

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end of the 1940s, demonstrates that positive interpretations of the Great War survived both the disillusionment of the ‘war books boom’ and the horrors of a second world conflict. As in Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant, however, Frankau does not entirely romanticize the depiction of war in Michael’s Wife. The novel’s protagonist, Michael Collyer – like Frankau himself – was shell-shocked during the Great War and now suffers from blackouts that have caused him to be invalided out of the army in the Second World War. Nevertheless, Frankau promotes soldiering as a rewarding experience, with Michael reflecting positively on the act of killing: ‘Five of ‘em. All with the sword. More of a kick than messing with stray girls’.52 Michael’s bloodthirsty recollection certainly contrasts with Aldington’s claim in Life for Life’s Sake ‘that I didn’t kill anyone, and I know I  saved the lives of two wounded Germans’.53 Whereas Aldington takes pride in his evasion of killing, Frankau suggests that this is a perfectly natural act in warfare. Elsewhere in Michael’s Wife, Frankau’s protagonist makes comparisons between the two world wars, and it is because, rather than in spite, of his combat participation that Michael prefers the first conflict: ‘good fun, the last. Better than helping father sell newspapers and tobacco. Escape!’ Here Frankau suggests that war could be an exciting, appealing experience for young men; in this instance it has allowed Michael to flee the boredom of working in his father’s shop. Michael is also grateful for his army experience as a source of social mobility. His promotion to the officer class has allowed him to rise from being a shopkeeper’s son to being a successful journalist and son-in-law to an aristocrat: ‘all those top drawer chaps calling you “Michael”, making you one of themselves . . . you who’d thrown up the chance of a schol[arship] to help father sell newspapers and tobacco’.54 Frankau’s militarism also informs his treatment of his protagonist’s psychological disorders. Although Frankau suggests Michael’s blackouts have indeed been triggered by his First World War experiences, he employs Freudian psychology to shift the blame away from warfare. Through psychoanalysis, Michael discovers that his neuroses date from his childhood and specifically the point when he discovered that his uncle and hero was actually a convicted rapist and murderer.55 While Frankau admits that shell shock is a recognizable disorder requiring innovative treatment, he suggests that it is likely to affect people with a predisposition to neurosis. Consequently, the war is not entirely to blame. This view, surprisingly enough, bears some similarity with the pacifist Vera Brittain’s treatment of shell shock in her novel Account Rendered. As in Michael’s Wife, expert analysis reveals that the war is not solely responsible for the protagonist’s

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disorder: ‘the reasons for the amnesia, or abnormality, lie deep in the character of a man, as well as in the events of the War’.56 Yet Brittain fiercely denounces war elsewhere in this novel; this is clearly not a tactic to shift blame away from the conflict. Freudian theories of psychoanalysis began to gain currency during the interwar years,57 and they could evidently inform the treatment of shell shock in fiction, even when writers approached warfare from contrasting perspectives. The prevalence of these discussions reflects the fact that by the Second World War shell shock was generally considered to be a legitimate disorder that could result from modern conflict, rather than simply the product of a weak constitution.58 The Second World War was also influential in fostering one crucial myth of the First World War, namely that it was a profound rupture, severing a postwar age of disillusionment from a blissful Edwardian summer. Sassoon had been highly influential in the construction of this myth during the interwar years, but it is not just nostalgic evocations of the Edwardian era that serve to enhance its power. The onset of the Second World War was also a crucial factor in the perception of the First World War as an irreversible break with the past. Representations of both world wars frequently reinforce this narrative by emphasizing continuity between the wars and treating them as part of the same era. The First World War is thus reinforced as a moment of change that paved the way for subsequent events and made a second such war possible. Meanwhile, the peaceful and serene Edwardian epoch appears more detached and remote than it ever did. The Powell and Pressburger film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1942), for instance, did much to reinforce this myth during the Second World War. The film’s protagonist, Clive Wynne-Candy, is portrayed as a dashing young officer during the Boer War when the film begins, but by the end of the film, set during the Second World War, he is an anachronism with outmoded ideas of chivalry and gentlemanly conduct in war. German atrocities during First World War, followed by the even greater brutality of the Nazi regime, have rendered Wynne-Candy’s romanticized notions of warfare obsolete. Britain, we are told, has no option but to respond in kind.59 In Siegfried’s Journey, Sassoon also alludes to this brutalization of European culture, stating how since 1914 war has become more than ever the ‘normal occupation of man’.60 The disillusioned Sassoon of the 1940s is inclined to see the world since 1914 as one characterized by war, feeding this myth of discontinuity. Aldington’s accounts of his childhood in Life for Life’s Sake similarly reinforce this sense of discontinuity. He notes, for example, how ‘I had not much more than a series of glimpses of the varied orderly society which was England before

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1914, but they sufficed’.61 Here Aldington portrays 1914 as the watershed when the ‘orderly’ Edwardian world gave way to a more chaotic modern era. By indicating that he had only had a ‘series of glimpses’ at the pre-1914 world, however, Aldington suggests that this is merely an impression formed by an incomplete patchwork of memories. This appears to be an admission, therefore, of the distorting influence of myth. Yet these glimpses ‘sufficed’; by confirming the myth of the Edwardian summer and 1914 as the rupture, they perform a necessary role for Aldington, providing a structure and narrative to his life story. Here we see why certain myths endure, particularly when they provide an orderly narrative to a far more complex historical reality. In turn, these myths of political and cultural change frequently provide a structure within which, and onto which, personal literary narratives can be mapped. This narrative is reinforced further when Aldington refers to the interwar years as a ‘long armistice’. He was not the first to view the interwar years in this light. Marshal Foch, the generalissimo of the allied armies in 1918, had similarly remarked that the Treaty of Versailles ‘is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years’.62 This notion is closely related to the ‘thirty years war’ thesis. Winton Churchill had used the term in a speech to the House of Commons in February 1945, and would again in his first volume of Second World War memoirs, The Gathering Storm (1948).63 The idea that the 1920s and 1930s were merely a hiatus, or a squandered opportunity for lasting peace, was similarly alluded to by T. S. Eliot in his poem ‘East Coker’ (1940), which described ‘the years of l’entre deux guerres’ as ‘twenty years largely wasted’.64 Such theories underscore the sense of continuity from the First World War to the Second World War, portraying the latter as nothing more than an extension of the former.65 1914 is again implied to be a caesura, separating this ‘thirty years war’ from a more peaceful era. This myth is also evident in fiction from the period. Vera Brittain’s two novels of the 1940s, Account Rendered and Born 1925, both advance this narrative in a similar fashion to Testament of Youth. Account Rendered is set primarily around the time of the Second World War and concerns the troubling effects of the last conflict upon the shell-shocked veteran Francis Halkin. Brittain’s protagonist is imbued with a keen sense of the wider impact of the war that extends beyond its effects upon him personally, however. When overlooking a ravine while on holiday in Somerset, there is little subtlety when Halkin points out to his wife that ‘it seems symbolic of our times. I mean the war just tore the same kind of terrific rent in our social and economic fabric’.66 The image of the ravine of course aptly reflects the rift in society that the war is perceived to have created. Brittain also conflates the two world wars as part of the same epoch, and again Francis

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is the vessel for this idea: ‘sorrow and humiliation . . . were especially typical of his generation, the generation which had known two great wars; and because they were typical, his understanding of his own age would be heightened by the grief that he had known’.67 The notion of a ‘war generation’ was, as we have seen, a key feature of Testament of Youth. By 1945 the experience of a second world conflict has further strengthened this sense of generational identity for Brittain. This generation is unique, cut off from those before or after, further implying a rupture or discontinuity. In Born 1925, Brittain also explored this idea of rupture, using a family saga model to convey contrasting generational responses to the two world wars. Adrian, the son of First World War veteran Robert Carbury, is the subject of the book’s title, and feels disconnected from his father’s generation: ‘the grown ups around him continually referred to a mysterious period which they spoke of as “before the war” – a time apparently as different from the present as B.C. from A.D’. As in Testament of Youth, Brittain portrays 1914 as a caesura of biblical proportions, to the extent that the pre-war world seems entirely alien to Adrian. According to Carbury’s friend Lord Westerley, Adrian’s indifference to his father’s affection is also a product of this discontinuity: ‘we happened to be born at the end of one of the calmest periods in the world’s history . . . Look at the literature of the last war. Most of it was one long indignation for this very reason. Its poets and novelists couldn’t get used to the terror, uncertainty, violence, and brutality that Adrian’s generation takes for granted’.68 The First World War is at the heart of their personal conflict. Whereas Robert’s generation was supposedly raised in a peaceful world, the post-war generation has grown up in a disrupted era, leaving it callous and emotionally distant. Westerley’s remarks of course reflect the key characteristics of the well-entrenched myth of discontinuity  – particularly the inaccurate notion that the pre-war world had been uniquely peaceful. Brittain’s publishers, Macmillan, deemed this myth appealing to readers, though:  the blurb for the novel highlighted the generational conflict by emphasizing ‘the cleavage between Adrian and his father’.69 Brittain also alludes to the growing literary nature of the myth, for Westerley cites the canonical literature of the war as evidence of an entire generation’s outlook. Although not all books about the previous war were of this disillusioned character, it is clear that by the 1940s a distinct perception of First World War literature was beginning to develop. Irony, as Paul Fussell had stressed, is central to many of these works of the interwar years,70 but it is perhaps the onset of the Second World War that secures the Great War’s ironic status in popular memory. As these texts from the 1940s

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suggest, the ultimate irony lies in the fact that, despite its immense costs, the First World War became just that – a prelude to yet another global conflict. Siegfried’s Journey, in particular, contains moments when the author’s 1940s self intrudes into the narrative and reflects ironically on the meaning and legacy of the First World War. Sassoon dedicates much of the latter portion of this autobiography to detailing his time lecturing in America shortly after the conflict. During these lectures Sassoon recited his famous war poetry, denounced war and espoused pacifism. The Second World War has of course proven these efforts to have been in vain, and, with the benefit of hindsight, Sassoon disappointedly notes that ‘President Wilson once remarked that “Peace is the healing and elevating influence in the world”. Neither his views nor mine have made much progress.’71 This terse final sentence highlights the irony of both Wilson’s words and Sassoon’s efforts to preach against war. The failure of Sassoon’s personal mission here also mirrors the wider political failure of Wilson’s League of Nations. Sassoon’s descriptions of his post-war optimism are also steeped in irony. Reflecting on the spring of 1919, when he wrote the poem ‘Everyone Sang’, Sassoon recalls that it ‘signified thankfulness for liberation from the war’. Sassoon admits that he was not simply thankful for having survived a past war, but also because he could be hopeful for a future free from conflict: ‘this, I hoped, was to be my last word on the subject, for I assumed that War “as an instrument of national policy” was completely discredited’. This seems naïve and deeply ironic to Sassoon in 1945, and he further underscores this false optimism only a paragraph later when describing a train journey through the countryside in the spring of 1919: ‘the Weald of Kent was doing what it could to revive my confidence in its dawns and sunsets. I had never seen the cherry orchards look lovelier in blossom, and every time the train took me to London I was that number of miles farther away from the war’.72 The employment of pastoral imagery is a technique Sassoon and many of his contemporaries, particularly his friend Edmund Blunden, used in both poetry and prose as a juxtaposition against the horrors of the Western Front. But here, in peacetime, the beauty of the countryside in spring seems to symbolize the younger Sassoon’s hopeful optimism of a new era now the war is over. This is the setting for the train journey to London, which while geographically taking Sassoon further from the recent battlefields of France, also serves as a metaphor for his temporal distance from the war. Yet, just as the beauty of the countryside seems ironic when employed in the depiction of trench warfare, so too does it seem tragic here given that the younger Sassoon’s hope is false. Just as the train journey seems to be taking Sassoon further away from one war, it is of course sending him hurtling towards another.

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Sassoon’s recognition of his naivety here highlights his sense of disappointment and betrayal. Dramatic irony similarly permeates Coward’s This Happy Breed. In response to Frank’s suggestion in 1919 that he might fight again, his wife Ethel berates him: ‘there’s your job, there’s this house and the life we’ve got to live in it and you spoil everything by talking about war and saying you’d go again if anyone asked you’. Ethel’s fear of bereavement, and the potential damage it might do their reunited family, is not such a concern for Frank, however, who confidently asserts ‘that there isn’t going to be another war, anyway’. The Second World War, it is true, had not yet broken out when Coward wrote the play in the summer of 1939, but it did appear increasingly inevitable. At this point, Frank’s comments would have appeared optimistic at the very best; by 1942, when the play was finally performed, they would have seemed foolishly naïve. But later in the play, in 1931, Frank is not so confident, informing his friend Bob that ‘I wonder when the next war’ll be’. The dramatic irony returns in Bob’s response: ‘not in our time, nor in our son’s time, thank God!’ The reason for Bob’s confidence is ‘The good old League of Nations’, which, by Coward’s time of writing, had of course been proven obsolete by Hitler’s aggressive expansionism.73 The irony would not have been lost on a 1940s audience. Brittain strikes a similar note in Account Rendered. Her protagonist Francis Halkin also emerges from the First World War with a naïve optimism: ‘this, he told himself, meant the end of war . . . It couldn’t come back for at least fifty years, after all that the world had been through’.74 The dramatic irony here engenders a pathos which heightens the tragic perception of the First World War and also denounces the Second as a betrayal of those who fought in it. The irony that pervades such passages provides a clear indication of how the onset of the Second World War could reinforce the evolving myths of the First World War. While narratives of futility and waste began to develop with the growing despondency of the interwar years, it appears that the outbreak of the Second World War could greatly intensify these feelings. Though the First World War had already come to be seen by many as futile, wasteful, and ironic, the onset of the Second World War seemed to confirm this perception; it was now clear that previous sacrifices had indeed been in vain and the Great War had not been ‘the war to end all wars’. In addition to strengthening the conflict’s tragedy and irony, the 1940s also gave rise to a new narrative of the First World War: that its mismanaged political and economic legacy caused the Second World War. This notion is frequently articulated in the literature of the 1940s. Aldington, for instance, is particularly scathing of the Treaty of Versailles and its failure to prevent further war:

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The treaty was not conciliatory enough to win co-operation of liberal and peaceloving German parties, and not stern enough to keep the warlike parties from further harm. It . . . humiliated Germany without crushing its latent belligerence and arrogance . . . The peace of 1815 . . . lasted for fifty years; the united wisdom of the enlightened democracies failed to make the peace of 1919 last for twenty years. One notes the progress.75

This sarcastic denunciation of European diplomacy reflects Aldington’s bitterness towards politicians for their failure to protect the peace that soldiers like him had fought for. Aldington also reveals how the onset of the Second World War could help formulate new narratives regarding the nature of the First World War and its legacy. This narrative, which draws a direct line of causality between the Treaty of Versailles and the Second World War, is contentious, but has nonetheless become part of the myth of both world wars. This is partly because this interpretation was later given credence by academic historians, most notably A. J. P. Taylor, who argued in 1961 that ‘the first World War explains the second and in fact caused it’.76 But while a number of historians have argued that the First World War and Versailles were significant long-term factors in explaining the origins of the Second World War World War,77 it is generally agreed that this is too simplistic an explanation of events.78 Rather, as Alan Sharp suggests, the ‘outbreak of a second Great War cannot be explained without Hitler and National Socialism’.79 Seeking to maintain the importance of the allied victory on the Western Front, Gary Sheffield has similarly argued that Versailles was not the direct cause of the Second World War. Rather, Sheffield blames the impact of the Depression and, like Sharp, the uniquely ruthless aims of Hitler for the outbreak of the conflict.80 Regardless of its historical merits, however, this narrative, as with the myth of discontinuity, provided a useful framework within which people could understand past events. For Aldington, it protects the validity of his contribution during the First World War and allows him to direct blame against the politicians whom he felt had failed to resolve the conflict successfully. Brittain’s novels also advance this narrative. In Account Rendered, Francis Halkin ‘gradually realised that the First war and the treaty that followed it, had made the second inevitable’.81 Here Francis takes this theory of causality to be axiomatic. Brittain suggests that with the benefit of hindsight, this ‘truth’ has become apparent. A similar journey of realization is evident in Born 1925: Robert Carbury’s efforts to preach pacifism ‘appeal to the intelligent who realised that Hitler and Mussolini were not the cause but the consequence of political insanity’.82 That the First World War is to blame for the second is once again deemed irrefutable by Brittain. As a committed pacifist by this stage in her life, such a

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narrative no doubt provided an appealing framework for understanding recent events; again, the utility of this myth gives it currency. Whereas blaming Hitler legitimated further war, viewing the First World War as the ultimate cause allowed pacifists to maintain that it was warfare in general which needed to be eradicated. Such a perspective, of course, served only to reinforce the alleged futility of the First World War. Aldington’s and Sassoon’s accounts, however, do not entirely espouse this pacifistic perspective. Rather, the onset of the Second World War affirms the legitimacy of the Great War for these writers. While still attributing blame to the Treaty of Versailles, Aldington, as demonstrated, suggests that there is something inherently belligerent about the German people. Sassoon, however, subscribes entirely to this notion, blaming the German character for the outbreak of both wars. Reflecting on his advocacy of a negotiated peace in 1917, Sassoon notes in Siegfried’s Journey how his opinions have changed since the outbreak of the Second World War: ‘in the light of subsequent events it is difficult to believe that a peace negotiated in 1917 would have been permanent. I share the general opinion that nothing on earth would have prevented a recurrence of Teutonic aggressiveness’.83 Due to the rise of Germany as an adversary once more, Sassoon argues that the innate belligerence of Germany has caused both wars. It is surely no coincidence that he was working on the final chapters of Siegfried’s Journey in late 1944 and early 1945,84 when revelations of the true terror of the Nazi regime had given the war an even clearer moral justification. This no doubt hardened his stance against Germany. Such a view is at odds, however, with the notion of commonality between soldiers on both sides during the First World War, a perception encouraged by many works of the ‘war books boom’. Given Sassoon’s earlier commitment to the pacifist cause, and his belief in 1917 that the war was being fought on false pretences, it is significant that he admits to this shift in opinion. By portraying Germany as an enemy which needed to be defeated during the First World War, Sassoon ascribes a meaning and validity to the conflict that his earlier, more vehement writings do not. There is certainly no admission in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer which suggests Sassoon may have changed his mind regarding his 1917 protest against the war. This new position also sits uneasily with the denunciations of war evident elsewhere in Siegfried’s Journey. Reflections on the First World War could therefore shift in various ways as the twentieth century progressed and did not necessarily align with a developing narrative of futility. With Germany a threat once more, war also remains a legitimate course of action for Noel Coward’s Frank Gibbons. In Act 3, Scene 2 of This Happy Breed, set in September 1938, Frank expresses his distaste for the nature of the

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Munich Agreement, and particularly the enthusiastic response from the public to it: ‘I only hope to God that we shall have guts enough to learn one lesson from this and that we shall never find ourselves in a position again when we have to appease anybody’. Kowtowing to this familiar aggressor, whom Frank proudly fought in the Great War, is clearly abhorrent for him. When his sister Sylvia suggests that war should be avoided at all costs, moreover, he retorts: ‘I don’t think it’s more blessed to give in and receive a nice kick on the bottom for doing it’.85 Coward himself had staunchly opposed the appeasement of Nazi Germany,86 and he imbues Gibbons here with a similar prescience that would have endeared the character to a 1940s audience. By the time the play was first performed it was of course evident that appeasement had failed. Frank’s views are made even clearer in the play’s final scene, set in the summer of 1939. Addressing his recently born grandson, Frank embarks on a monologue summarizing his worldview: You belong to something that nobody can’t ever break, however much they try. And they’ll try all right – they’re trying now. Not only people in other countries who want to do us in because they’re sick of us ruling the roost . . . but people here, in England. People who have let ’emselves get soft and afraid. People who go on a lot about peace and good will and the ideals they believe in, but somehow don’t believe in ’em enough to think they’re worth fighting for.87

Frank expresses his pride in Britain’s position as a dominant imperial power, and affirms his belief in the values of liberal democracy that Britain purported to uphold during this period. These values, according to Frank, are worth defending with force, and fuel his antipathy towards appeasement and his support for military action against an aggressive foe. Frank does not directly reflect on the First World War here, but Coward makes it clear elsewhere that his protagonist has never doubted the validity of his war service. Indeed, with another war looming, Frank’s experiences as a veteran have, instead of inducing disillusionment, strengthened his resolve. Rather, it is the women in the play, Frank’s wife Ethel and his sister Sylvia – precisely those who have not experienced the Great War first-hand  – who express more pacifistic sentiments. For Frank, warfare, when in service of one’s country, remains a worthwhile course of action. It is for these reasons that Frank supports confronting Nazi Germany, and it is for these same reasons, Coward implies, that he volunteered to fight two decades earlier. The First World War was also deemed valuable for the lessons that could be drawn from its experience. These lessons, however, were often constructed around myths of what the First World War had supposedly been like. Aldington,

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for instance, recalls how ‘when I have heard people making optimistic predictions about later wars, I remember that in 1914 most people said that the war would be over in six months:  some said three’.88 Aldington suggests the First World War has taught him, if not everyone else, a painful lesson: that modern wars are likely to be protracted affairs and optimistic predictions are therefore unwise. Yet while Aldington himself may have believed the First World War would be over quickly, this is a simplified narrative of attitudes in 1914. As Stuart Hallifax has demonstrated, ‘people’s beliefs as to the duration of the war were numerous and dynamic: most probably felt it would last into 1915, or possibly longer’.89 Like all myths, however, it is rehearsed because it suits the mood of the times. Here, it warns the nation against false hope and poor preparation in future wars. In Aldington’s case, ‘remembering’ the naïve optimism at the outbreak of war in 1914 provides him with a psychological defence against disappointment during the current war. Lessons have also been learnt in a military sense, as Sassoon suggests towards the end of Siegfried’s Journey:  ‘the soldiers of the 1914–18 War were . . . the victims of amateurish mismanagement and incompetence. It was at their expense that England taught herself how to wage modern warfare. Against this I made my individual protest. But I must now admit that it was just as well that she did learn.’90 Sassoon reiterates here the venom that he directed towards the higher command in his earlier writing, rehearsing a now well-entrenched myth:  that bungling generals and politicians mismanaged the conduct of the war, leading the common soldier to his grave. Despite his admission that the First World War had not been futile, he was still clearly convinced that British soldiers had been ‘lions led by donkeys’. At the time of the anti-war protestations described here, Sassoon no doubt thought that the prevention of subsequent wars was more important than the preparation for them. By the 1940s, however, Sassoon has to qualify his stance, conceding that it is fortunate these military lessons have been learned. Sassoon was writing at a time when the direction of the war in Europe was swinging in the favour of the allies. He was evidently thankful for recent military successes. If the First World War had failed to prevent the Second World War, at least the experience of the former was helping Britain to win the latter.

Reception Given the desire for escapism among many readers, the reception climate for these texts was not entirely favourable. Coward, however, as a popular and prolific

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playwright and actor, was well positioned to achieve commercial success. This Happy Breed, with Coward playing Frank Gibbons, was first performed during a tour of the provinces in 1942, before moving to the Haymarket in London in April 1943. The play also appeared in print that year, published by William Heinemann. Despite having written the work three years previously, Coward’s sentiments chimed with those of the wartime public, and the press responded positively. The Manchester Guardian, for instance, was thankful Coward had chosen not to alter the text, observing that ‘the anxieties of our day add poignancy to this record of family life in a London suburb from 1919 to 1939’.91 In the midst of another world war, the dramatic irony that accompanied the characters’ optimism in the wake of the Great War was undoubtedly reinforced. But the play also took on a greater emotive power in the light of renewed hostilities with Germany, and in this sense the perceived tragedy of the Great War may have been enhanced. Yet This Happy Breed was also patriotic and pro-war, and this no doubt accounted for much of its appeal. Coward’s antipathy towards appeasement had of course been vindicated; in this respect the play also meshed with popular attitudes, despite its delayed production. The Scotsman, for instance, noted that ‘it is remarkable how little in it seems to call for change or modification. Even Munich and appeasement appear in the light in which with later knowledge they are now regarded’.92 A more belligerent attitude towards Germany, and a more positive perspective on the necessity of military action, now appealed to a British public at war with Nazi Germany. The popularity of Coward’s patriotism was further evinced by Cineguild’s film adaptation of This Happy Breed, which was released in 1944.93 Shot in Technicolor, the film was faithful to the play in plot and dialogue, and it too proved to be a great success. C. A. Lejeune, writing in The Observer commented on its immense popularity, noting how this film about the suburbs has gone out into the suburbs, and the suburbs have taken it into their hearts. All the Gibbonses of Greater London have flocked to see themselves on the screen . . . Nor is the enthusiasm for the film confined to Metroland. The Gibbonses are a large family; they are found all over the British Isles. There are plenty of Gibbonses, too, serving in Normandy, Italy, and the Middle East. No film in my memory has brought in more letters of appreciation.94

Part of the play and the film’s appeal evidently lay in its depiction of an ‘ordinary’ and unexceptional family, to which a large proportion of the British public could relate. Frank’s pride in his service during the Great War, his patriotism, and his

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unsympathetic stance towards Germany were no doubt part of this appeal. If the Great War did begin to appear to some writers as more tragic and futile in the light of the Second World War, it seems unlikely that such ideas found great traction among the general public during the conflict itself. Rather, the public wanted patriotism, and this, as Philip Hoare has argued, was ideal for Coward: ‘the war redefined Britishness and served as an antidote to the disillusion and decadence of the interwar period. Its revival of the values of empire and Britain’s greatness was congenial to Coward . . . the values he espoused dovetailed with the Dunkirk/Blitz/“Britain-can-take-it” spirit and he was able to exploit them fully’.95 With Britain at war again, there was little appetite for narratives of futility or disillusionment, even in relation to a previous conflict. If the cultural climate was ideal for Coward, however, it was not necessarily so favourable for other writers. Detailed, disillusioned recollections of First World War were evidently not in vogue, and this was potentially problematic for those like Brittain and Sassoon who had risen to fame as a consequence of their writings on the last conflict. Aldington may have struggled for similar reasons. While it is unclear whether he had attempted to publish Life for Life’s Sake in Britain, he would surely have done so had there been interest from publishers.96 Faber’s blurb for Sassoon’s Siegfried’s Journey therefore addressed the possible concerns of its readers, stressing that ‘there is no description of war’. Rather, the blurb described the story as ‘a journey out of war and youth into peace, and manhood, a quarter of a century ago – a journey which many are making today’.97 Faber therefore portrayed the autobiography as an optimistic narrative of personal progression, and, most importantly, one that was relevant to the times. Despite the unfavourable climate, Siegfried’s Journey proved to be a commercial success. Faber’s first edition of 31,350 sold quickly, and won the Book Society Award.98 Its critical reception was also largely positive. To be sure, Sassoon was a skilled prose stylist, and his literary merit was perhaps sufficient to sustain his reputation, regardless of his views. And yet the warm response to the book appears to have owed much to Sassoon’s change of stance in relation to the First World War and his admission that, due to ‘Teutonic aggressiveness’, the conflict was worthwhile. The Sunday Graphic, for example, sympathized with Sassoon’s ‘maturity’ in this respect,99 while the New Statesman and Nation praised his ability to ‘evolve and mature’.100 The hardening of Sassoon’s stance towards Germany and the rejection of his anti-war views were popular with these reviewers. For some, the Second World War had evidently enhanced the Great War’s validity rather than its futility.

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Although Faber had been keen to stress the book’s timely relevance, not all reviewers agreed in this respect. Ifor Evans, reviewing the book in Time and Tide, criticized Sassoon for showing little awareness ‘of anything that had happened in the world since 1920’.101 Certainly, Siegfried’s Journey, like all of Sassoon’s autobiographical writing, is heavily nostalgic. Yet Sassoon’s recollections are clearly framed by contemporary events; the spectre of the Second World War is present throughout the book. And, as Sassoon’s biographer Jean Moorcroft Wilson has noted, as ‘an account of the First World War appearing at the end of the Second and full of famous names, [Siegfried’s Journey] also appealed to the popular imagination’.102 This contemporary resonance did not go unnoticed by Harold Nicholson in The Observer: ‘ “Siegfried’s Journey” illumines . . . those problems of adjustment which the demobilized soldier experiences today . . . He experienced and understood that tragic feeling of betrayal which affects the returning soldier when he supposes that society, having taken his death for granted, is less concerned with the reshaping of his life’.103 As Nicholson suggests, Sassoon’s experiences during and after the Great War were also applicable to the soldiers of the Second World War. Sassoon’s story of his own struggle to reintegrate into civilian society mirrored the experiences of millions of young men in 1945. The sense of disillusionment that pervades this passage demonstrates that for Nicholson, like Sassoon, the second conflict has heightened the sense of tragedy that characterized the first. In contrast, Michael’s Wife, published by Macdonald, does not appear to have been reviewed widely in the national press.104 Frankau’s interwar popularity had evidently begun to wane. The novel was his first in four years, a fairly large gap given how prolific he had been before the Second World War, and this may have contributed to his falling out of favour. Those publications that did review the book primarily identified the novel’s prominent psychological themes. The Press and Journal, for example, noted how ‘obviously this is a novel for the times, when psychological analysis and pathological research are very much the rage’.105 Frankau’s discussion of shell shock was pertinent, and fashionable, therefore, but reviews do not provide a clear indication of whether or not his views on the war were too. Given the success of This Happy Breed a few years earlier, however, it seems unlikely that Frankau’s conservatism would have been a source of great contention for many readers. Vera Brittain had also tapped into the popularity of psychological themes, and was convinced Account Rendered could be a success. Brittain had even assured Macmillan New York that the book would sell, recalling how works with ‘very grim themes’, such as Journey’s End, had also been popular.106 In Britain, Macmillan certainly did not shy away from presenting the book as such, noting

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how ‘until he lays it down the reader hardly notices how many . . . significant issues have confronted him’.107 Brittain’s confidence in her ‘grim’ theme appears to have been vindicated from a commercial perspective: according to Brittain, a first edition of 50,000 copies sold out immediately before publication.108 This may partly have been because the war themes in the book were played down; nowhere in the blurb is either world war mentioned. Readers may not have been so averse to serious themes providing they did not relate directly to contemporary events. Even if accurate, the impressive sales figures for the book are potentially misleading, however. Although booksellers had enthusiastically preordered the book, this may well have been because of Brittain’s previous success, and their enthusiasm does not necessarily reflect the speed at which the book sold to the public from the bookshops. Reasons to be sceptical regarding the book’s popularity are provided by the novel’s critical reception. Few publications chose to review Account Rendered, and those which did were lukewarm in their response. This does not appear to have been due to a lack of enthusiasm for Brittain’s anti-war themes, however; rather, critics were unimpressed for literary reasons. The Manchester Guardian, for example, criticized Brittain’s characterization and plotting, noting how the ‘novelist who is deeply concerned with social causes is seldom equally preoccupied with the problems of art’.109 The TLS also dismissed the book, complaining that Brittain’s narrative ‘was too flat and naively self-explanatory’.110 These reviews made little comment on Brittain’s pacifist perspective. One review that did, however, was more sympathetic. The Observer wrote that Brittain was ‘justly oppressed by the futility of wars I and II, and rightly interested in such subjects as psychotherapy and welfare clinics’.111 This reviewer reiterates the myth of futility, although he curiously applies it to both wars. Given that the Second World War had only just been won, and given that it was generally considered a just war, this is a surprising assertion. There are other explanations for the unenthusiastic responses to Brittain’s work. As Brittain’s biographers Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge have noted, Brittain’s campaigning against Allied saturation bombing during the Second World War had been unpopular with many, and this may have reduced sympathy with her message among some readers. Berry and Bostridge also argue that ‘she would find herself increasingly out of step with literary fashions of the post-war era’.112 Perceived literary merit was necessary to sustain a writer’s reputation. Like Owen, Brittain’s reflections on the First World War did not necessarily chime with public attitudes during the 1940s, but, unlike Owen, critics also dismissed Brittain’s work on grounds of literary quality.

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The lukewarm response to Born 1925 also reflects the lack of public enthusiasm for Brittain’s pacifism. Harold Macmillan, at this stage still involved with his family’s eponymous publishing house, was supportive of the novel and felt it a powerful story, but conceded that he did not agree with her views on war, suggesting that ‘English pacifism and wishful thinking were the main causes of the second war’.113 The Second World War was evidently not futile for Macmillan. But more significantly, Macmillan implies that the First World War had not been futile either. He suggests Germany had needed fighting during the first conflict, and that Britain should have maintained a more belligerent stance into the 1930s, rather than following a policy of appeasement. In 1948 the critic Ifor Evans echoed this view in a literary survey of the interwar years. Evans blamed the works of the ‘war books boom’ for fostering ‘the political passivism of the thirties and its refusal in many minds to see that Europe was preparing for a new barbarism’.114 Such an attitude might also explain the tepid response to Brittain’s work at this time. A common thread of discontent running through a number of reviews of Born 1925 was the heavy-handed manner through which Brittain espoused her philosophy. The literary journal John O’London’s Weekly, for instance, dismissed the book as a ‘pacifist tract’,115 while Sphere magazine criticized it for ‘reading like a sermon’.116 Most disparagingly of all, the News Review lamented how the novel’s ‘Sunday School flavour gives it a smug, unreal quality’.117 Few of these reviews directly critiqued the message itself, but if these reviewers were sympathetic to Brittain’s pacifism it is hard to imagine they would have been so critical of the manner in which it was delivered. The Second World War, with its seemingly just cause, was a clear antidote to anti-war sentiment. Perhaps most significantly, many people did not have any great desire to read about either war at this point. In 1949 Britons were recovering from a war still vivid in the memory, its effects still impacting on their daily lives. As the not entirely unkind Western Mail noted in response to Born 1925, ‘even the author’s perfect insight and narrative excellence are not quite sufficient to make us forget how tired we are of reading about two wars and anticipating a third’.118

Conclusion Rather than entirely eclipsing interest in the Great War, the outbreak of the Second World War actually led to an initial upsurge in demand for literature pertaining to the previous conflict. As the evidence of reading habits

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demonstrates, the public read a variety of books about the previous war, illustrative of the heterogeneous assortment of narratives that had persisted throughout the 1930s. Evidently, as the war progressed, a growing desire for escapism among many readers quelled popular interest in the First World War, but critics and anthologists still turned to the literature of the last war. Owen was consistently hailed as the war poet during this period, and his reputation was enhanced. While some dismissed Owen’s anti-war sentiments as inapplicable during the Second World War, the poet’s perceived literary merits sustained his reputation. There was also a strong sense that Owen’s poetry was an appropriate response to his war. The Second World War was seen as a markedly different conflict, and this distinction served to underscore the developing, but still contested, narratives of futility and horror associated with the previous war. The development of many of these myths is evident in new works of literature published during this period. In some instances, a disenchanted memory of the First World War was reinforced. The failure of the Great War to prevent the Second World War solidified the notion that the former was futile, while the onset of new hostilities magnified the sense of discontinuity and rupture. A new myth also emerged – the notion that the First World War had caused the Second. The fact that the Great War had not ended all wars further underlined its perceived futility. But this was not the only interpretation. The renewal of conflict against a familiar foe suggested to some that Germany was an inherently belligerent nation that had needed to be fought in 1914 and 1939. In this sense the First World War could be redeemed as a worthwhile and necessary conflict. The collective memory of the First World War did not therefore develop in a uniform, linear fashion. For some, the conflict became even more futile and horrendous in the light of the Second World War; for others the war retained, or assumed, a more sharply defined validity. The long-term implications of the Second World War in this respect, however, would not be felt fully until the 1960s, when the fiftieth anniversary of the Great War triggered a resurgence of interest in the conflict.

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Republishing the First World War: The Impact of the 1960s

Anniversaries provoke reflection. In July 1963 the Sunday Times observed that ‘suddenly there is a gust of nostalgia. In the cinema, in the theatre, in magazines and in books. They are all infected by World War One Fever’.1 This ‘fever’, which gripped the British media in 1963, was triggered by the forthcoming fiftieth anniversary of the Great War. Since 1939, although it had never disappeared entirely from view, the First World War had been overshadowed by its successor. This began to change in the years leading up to the anniversary, when a range of new cultural representations, and the rediscovery of existing texts, reignited popular interest in the conflict. A significant early symptom of ‘World War One Fever’ was the musical Oh, What a Lovely War! (1963), produced by Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, and written by Charles Chilton. Oh, What A Lovely War! conveyed an overtly left wing, anti-war message. With scathing satire, Littlewood and Chilton portrayed the war in terms of futile waste, dismissing the generals as aristocratic bunglers and depicting working class soldiers as innocent victims. Performed extensively during the 1960s at various theatres across the country, and then adapted for radio, Oh, What a Lovely War! reached a large audience.2 Its impact was further enhanced when, in 1969, it was adapted into a successful film by Richard Attenborough. Another symptom of ‘World War One fever’, according to The Sunday Times, was the BBC’s plans for a documentary series. This television programme, which aired the following year, was titled The Great War, and was unparalleled in terms of popular appeal. Produced to coincide exactly with the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict, the series averaged over eight million viewers an episode, with viewing figures peaking at over eleven million for the fourth episode. The series’ writers – historians Corelli Barnett and John Terraine – avoided

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perpetuating myths of the war, but the nature of the medium made this difficult. Archive footage of muddy trenches and devastated battlefields reinforced the horrific perception of the conflict that many viewers already held.3 The publishing world was also not immune to ‘World War One fever’. The publication of a number of popular historical studies, in particular, reflected the resurgence of interest in the conflict. Leon Wolff ’s In Flanders Fields (1958), for instance, perpetuated the idea that the war had been a futile waste, while Alan Clark’s The Donkeys (1961) provided a damning critique of British generalship. The most significant of these works, however, was A. J. P. Taylor’s The First World War:  An Illustrated History (1963), which The Sunday Times also cited as an example of renewed public interest in the conflict. One of the bestselling books about the conflict of all time, Taylor’s account promoted the idea that First World War was largely senseless and wasteful, although he avoided Clark’s more sensational suggestion that British soldiers had been ‘lions led by donkeys’.4 Unlike the interwar years, however, this period did not witness the publication of high numbers of new literary works about the war. Hutchinson published Charles Carrington’s Western Front memoir Soldier from the Wars Returning in 1965, and in the 1970s fictional representations of the conflict, such as Susan Hill’s Strange Meeting (1971), began to appear, but there was no flood of new literature akin to the ‘war books boom’. Nevertheless, the canon began to take shape during this period and, as part of this cultural stratification, numerous texts were republished. These included a new edition of Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That in 1957 and a new collection of Wilfred Owen’s poetry in 1963. Books that had gone out of print were also republished, including Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero and Frederic Manning’s Her Privates We in 1965. The renewed interest in the Great War continued into the following decade, with a new edition of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth published in 1978 and adapted for television the following year. Many representations from this period therefore reaffirmed narratives of futile disaster, and for these reasons scholars frequently regard the 1960s to be the crucial decade during which a coherent mythology of the First World War was cemented.5 To explain these shifts the historian Brian Bond has highlighted the social and cultural upheavals of the period, pointing to the growth of the anti-war movement, the ‘emergence of an independent youth culture’, radical student protest, and the changes associated with the development of a more permissive society.6 Yet, as Dan Todman notes, ‘we should be wary of mythologizing the 1960s itself ’: not all of British society had begun to adopt such radical

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perspectives, and many veterans, still alive during the 1960s, continued to resist a memory of the Great War centred on horror and futility.7 Publishing and reading trends can shed light on this debate. This chapter therefore discusses literature published shortly before, during and after the 1960s, with a specific focus on the republication and reception of three key literary figures: Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen and Vera Brittain. These case studies provide further evidence of the significant, yet largely underappreciated, role of publishers in helping to construct the memory of the war, but they also raise important questions regarding the significance of the 1960s, allowing us to assess how pervasive certain myths of the conflict were during this period.

Robert Graves In 1957, not long before the great revival of interest in the First World War, Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That, a key work of the ‘war books boom’, was republished.8 Rather than simply being reissued, however, the text was also rewritten by Graves, with a new prologue and epilogue. What can these revisions tell us about how personal memories of the Great War evolved in relation to the broader mythology of the conflict? Given that many scholars see the 1960s as a crucial point in the formation of contemporary attitudes to the war, it is tempting to see Graves’s revised edition of his autobiography as a stronger reinforcement of the horror and futility of the conflict than the original version. Esther MacCallum-Stewart, for example, has argued that as the First World War came to be seen in more tragic terms, veterans ‘began to adapt their stories to conform to these attitudes . . . Graves had pre-empted these changes in belief in 1957 when he published a new edition of Goodbye to All That, reshaping it as a more emotive and (marginally) less mendacious text’.9 This appraisal should be treated with caution. First, we should not assume Graves pre-empted changing attitudes to the First World War. Publishers, as I  have shown, played a crucial role in constructing the war’s memory, and were often the driving force behind these decisions. Indeed, rather than instigating the decision to republish the work himself, Graves was actually approached in 1956 by the American publishers Doubleday, who suggested he revise the work for republication.10 After Graves agreed to do so, Cassell published the revised edition in Britain. MacCallumStewart’s suggestion that the 1957 edition of the text is a more emotive work is also open to debate. Robert Graves’s nephew and biographer Richard Perceval

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Graves has suggested quite the opposite, arguing that by revising the text Graves ‘robbed his masterpiece of the disturbingly raw edge which had helped to make it such a powerful work’.11 The exact nature of these revisions, then, is worth closer scrutiny. In some instances MacCallum-Stewart’s arguments appear to hold true. They might, for example, explain Graves’s subtle revision to a section describing his and Siegfried Sassoon’s growing scepticism regarding the validity of the war. In the 1929 edition Graves wrote: ‘it was said that Asquith in the autumn of 1915 had been offered peace terms . . . We both thought that the terms should have been accepted, though Siegfried was more vehement than I was on the subject’.12 Given Sassoon’s subsequent protest against the war in 1917, and the vociferousness of his poetry, it is not surprising to read that Sassoon was the more passionate advocate in this respect. In the 1957 edition, however, this qualification was gone. Instead, Graves recalls that ‘Siegfried vehemently asserted that the terms should have been accepted; I agreed’.13 This minor reformulation puts Graves’s views directly in alignment with Sassoon’s more passionate pacifism at the time, and certainly appears to reflect the shift in attitudes towards the First World War between the publication of the two editions. Whereas Graves may have been reluctant to associate himself quite so firmly with Sassoon’s views when they were more contentious, by the late 1950s, in the shadow of the Second World War – which for many enhanced the tragedy of the first – such a view was perhaps more palatable for critics and the reading public. Other revisions to the text, however, are more ambiguous. The contrast between the two editions regarding Graves’s decision to enlist, for example, permits various interpretations. In the 1929 text, Graves wrote: I entirely believed that France and England had been drawn into a war which they had never contemplated and for which they were entirely unprepared. It never occurred to me that newspapers and statesmen could lie. I forgot my pacifism – I was ready to believe the worst in the Germans. I was outraged to read of the cynical violation of Belgian neutrality.14

In the 1957 edition, however, Graves did not highlight his belief in the justness of the war, and all of the above extract, apart from the last sentence, was removed. In some respects, therefore, the latter edition is more compatible with a developing myth of futility. Apart from the invasion of Belgium, the 1957 text suggests Graves had little other identification with the political motives of the war. Graves’s reasons for making these omissions are not clear, but it seems plausible he feared such statements would appear more naïve in the light of increasing

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public cynicism regarding the meaning of the war. It also perhaps reflects the fact that by the 1950s the reasons for Britain entering the war were less clearcut than they had been in the 1920s. After all, the certainty of the victorious allies at Versailles that Germany and her allies had been to blame for the war had been thoroughly revised by this point, with the dominant orthodoxy being that Europe had somehow ‘slithered’ into the war, rather than it having resulted from the aggression of one particular nation.15 And yet, by removing any critique of politicians or the press, the revised text provides a less bitter and damning indictment, and Graves’s enlistment is presented as a simple moral decision, detached from any awareness of political machinations. It is not clear, therefore, that these changes constitute a conscious effort by Graves to conform to the emerging mythology of the war. Elsewhere, Graves’s revisions make the text a less potent indictment of the war, and, in this sense, Richard Graves’s assertion that the original text holds more emotive power is not without merit. In the 1929 edition, for example, when recalling his convalescence after being severely injured in 1916, Graves alludes to his deteriorating mental state, and admits to being ‘weak and petulant and muddled’.16 In the 1957 edition, however, this sentence has been removed altogether. Graves’s desire not to dwell on the mental strains of war is even more evident in the substantial revisions he made towards the end of the book. On recalling his life after the war, when he lived and ran a shop with his wife Nancy, the 1929 edition included detailed descriptions of Graves’s attempts to overcome the psychological problems wrought by the conflict. Graves, for example, recalls how ‘war horror overcame me again . . .I thought that perhaps I owed it to Nancy to go to a psychiatrist to be cured; yet I was not sure’.17 This passage and a further paragraph expanding on the theme of psychiatric treatment were all removed by Graves for the 1957 edition. This is a curious omission given the evolving memory of the war and developing attitudes to shell shock and psychological trauma: by the Second World War it was increasingly accepted that psychological breakdown could be a legitimate response to the terrors of combat.18 And given that a collective memory of the war which increasingly emphasized suffering and futility was beginning to take shape, it is surprising that Graves neglects to mention his post-war psychological problems. Graves’s omission of these passages diminishes the potency of this section of the text, and is certainly not indicative of an author cleverly pre-empting the developing attitudes of the 1960s. The personal memories of veterans, and their choices of self-representation, did not always align with the popular memory of the conflict.

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The evolution of Good-bye to All That was therefore primarily a product of artistic and personal factors. The sixty-one-year-old Graves may have been embarrassed by these detailed and candid admissions of psychological trauma, and as a younger and perhaps angrier man in 1929 he may also have had a stronger desire to shock when the book was first published. Despite his discussion of mental trauma in this first edition, it is also worth remembering that Graves had stated during the ‘war books boom’ that he had not intended to write an anti-war novel,19 and the omissions from the 1957 text suggest he had no intention of remoulding the work into one nearly thirty years later. Rather, the 1957 edition is even less ‘anti-war’ than its predecessor in this respect. Graves had also certainly not become a committed pacifist since the original publication of the work; in the new epilogue to the 1957 edition of the book he states that he had volunteered his services upon the outbreak of the Second World War.20 Critical responses to the new edition also reveal how Graves’s memories related to the broader mythology of the war in late 1950s.21 The TLS, for example, viewed the First World War through the prism of the Second World War, noting how the Second, unlike the First, ‘does not seem to have produced in any of the writers who went through it any such prolonged aftermath of inner stress, nor, on the other hand, has it produced any such memorable literature’. This view, as we have seen, was expressed during the second conflict itself. The reason for this, the TLS article asserted, was partly due to ‘the hellishness of trench warfare’, but also due to the ‘estrangement’ of soldiers from the ‘fatuous jingoism’ of civilians during the first conflict.22 This reviewer expounds a number of key myths of the First World War:  not only the distinct horror of the trenches, but also the detachment of the soldier from the civilian. Graves’s account was therefore timely, as it seemed to confirm perceptions of the First World War formed in the wake of the Second World War. Two other reviews of the book asserted a more profound relevance for the work. The Weekly Scotsman, like the TLS, drew on the experience of the Second World War:  ‘to a younger generation reading this book for the first time, Mr. Graves might have been speaking for future generations. Indeed no one in the Second World War generation has yet had the ability to say things so profoundly, things which needed so desperately to be said’.23 Younger readers were a concern for this critic. Like those who welcomed the works of the ‘war books boom’ for the message they conveyed to the young, this reviewer implies Graves’s account is of value not just as a denunciation of the First World War, but of war in general. In this sense, Goodbye to All That filled a void in the literary landscape left by the lack of quality reflections on the Second World

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War. Graves is therefore afforded considerable importance as a spokesman for two war generations. This reviewer welcomes Goodbye to All That because it matches a growing perception of the Great War, and also because it embodies a spirit perceived to be lacking in the literature of the Second World War. The emerging canon of First World War literature was, in some respects, becoming the literature of war in general. Peter Dunn, writing in the Yorkshire Post, found the book similarly important, noting how ‘the younger generation will find it of absorbing interest. For those born in the early 1930s and later, the 1914–18 war years and those following them have been somewhat clouded by rosy sentiment which, in the cause of historical accuracy, needs the slap in the face Goodbye to All That is capable of administering’.24 Again, the importance of the ‘truth’ being disseminated to younger readers is deemed paramount. Curious, however, is this reviewer’s suggestion that the young may still have romanticized the First World War during this period. The extent to which younger Britons did harbour such illusions during the 1950s is debatable, but these readers may not necessarily have developed a strong sense of the futility and waste of the First World War. These myths remained contested, despite the disillusionment of the interwar years, and popular culture in the decade after 1945 tended to concern the more recent war: younger generations may not have been exposed to the likes of Owen or Remarque. The cultural representations of the 1960s therefore had a significant influence on these younger cohorts, as the republication and dissemination of Wilfred Owen’s poems during this decade illustrates.

Wilfred Owen It has become almost accepted wisdom among First World War scholars that Wilfred Owen’s poetry did not rise to prominence until the 1960s.25 But while the 1960s were undoubtedly significant in this respect, we should not overstate the decade’s importance. As we have seen in earlier chapters, Owen’s reputation was continuously bolstered throughout the interwar years, and by the outbreak of the Second World War his position as one of the key poets of the Great War had already been secured. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Owen’s popularity appears to have been sustained: Edmund Blunden’s edition of his work was reprinted in 1946, 1949, 1951, 1955, 1960, 1961 and 1963. The 1960s, therefore, was not the decade during which Owen was discovered, but rather a period during which his reputation was considerably enhanced.

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At the beginning of the 1960s Owen began to receive increasing scholarly attention, with Chatto & Windus publishing D.  S. R.  Welland’s Wilfred Owen: A Critical Study (1960). This particular house, as we have seen, played a central role in constructing the memory of the First World War during the 1920s and 1930s, and had published the two previous editions of Owen’s poetry. Their continued commitment to publishing Owen was similarly crucial during the 1960s. Reviews of Welland’s study provide some indication of Owen’s reputation as it stood at the beginning of the decade. John Coleman, writing in the Sunday Times observed how ‘there is a terrible interdependence of worth on the literary stock exchange:  what goes up almost inevitably forces something else down. Rupert Brooke was devalued by . . . the achievement of Wilfred Owen, and Owen has . . . suffered from the boom in Isaac Rosenberg’.26 As Coleman suggests, the literary importance of Owen had already clearly been established, and the disillusioned and tragic view of the conflict his poems expounded had already firmly superseded the patriotic romanticism of Rupert Brooke. Coleman rather confuses the picture, however, in his suggestion that Owen’s reputation had dipped in relation to that of Rosenberg. Although Rosenberg remains central to the canon today, Owen is now the more influential figure. Owen’s exact position in relation to other First World War poets was therefore still open to debate at this stage. Malcolm Bradbury, reviewing Welland’s work in The Guardian, for instance, noted how ‘we are still left with the question of Owen’s relative status’.27 Owen’s and Rosenberg’s depictions of the horror and hopelessness of the war are complementary, however – unlike Owen’s and Brooke’s. The question at the beginning of the 1960s then was not which perspective on war would become predominant, but rather which of the disillusioned poets would become pre-eminent. Owen was a major contender. As the TLS suggested, ‘Wilfred Owen was never, like Rupert Brooke, a hero-poet of war; but there is a sense in which he was, between 1918 and 1939, a hero poet of anti-war’.28 Owen’s reputation, and his perspective on the war, had gained considerable currency during the interwar years. The major development during the 1960s, therefore, would be Owen’s rise to become the premier poet of the war in relation to similarly disillusioned poets. This would coincide with a further enhancement of the mythology of the war as the decade progressed. By 1960, Chatto & Windus had begun to prepare a new edition of Owen’s work, edited by the poet Cecil Day Lewis. Day Lewis had worked for the Ministry of Information during the Second World War, before joining Chatto & Windus as a director and senior editor. Day Lewis was crucial in ensuring the further dissemination of Owen’s work, his role indicative of the publishing industry’s efforts

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to promote a disillusioned narrative of the war during the 1960s. Day Lewis’s correspondence also demonstrates that Owen’s reputation had been steadily growing since 1918, and that by the early 1960s he was already considered a major poet. Harold Owen, the poet’s brother, was heavily involved in the preparation of Cecil Day Lewis’s collection, and noted, in a letter to Day Lewis that ‘I have often wondered . . . why it is that W[ilfred]’s slim published output should not only live but increase in stature with every decade’. He suggested this was because the poems produced a ‘devastating sense of loss’ in the reader upon the realization that the world ‘should be deprived of the fine literature that he . . . would have produced’.29 Harold’s words should be read with caution. Until his death he strove to not only bolster, but also protect, his brother’s reputation. His three-volume biography of the Owen family, Journey from Obscurity (1963–1965), made considerable efforts to hide the poet’s alleged homosexuality, and he used his letters to Day Lewis to delineate carefully what he felt should and should not be said about his brother. His suggestion that Owen’s poetry gained its power from a sense of what the poet might have written also seems an inadequate explanation. Rather, it was because Owen’s depictions of war became more easily aligned with the popular memory of the conflict. They also suited the narrative of the war that Day Lewis was seeking to perpetuate at Chatto & Windus. Harold’s assertion that his brother’s reputation had increased steadily over time is corroborated by Chatto & Windus’s summary, in 1975, of the poet’s rise throughout the decades: Owen’s poetry sold at a very steady rate for many years. The graph probably went slightly up as time went by. Then two things happened: Benjamin Britten wrote the War Requiem using some of Wilfred Owen’s poems, and this became . . . internationally famous, and a year or so later there was a . . . considerable revival of interest in the First World War and its writers. Wilfred Owen of course was one of the outstanding poets of the First World War and was therefore in the lead in the revival.30

As this passage suggests, Owen’s poetry had been selling steadily since the interwar years. The fact that Blunden’s edition of his poetry had been printed multiple times since 1946 supports this impression. It is clear, therefore, that Owen’s reputation was already established by the 1960s, although this decade evidently produced a remarkable spike in his popularity, triggered by Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Britten composed the War Requiem to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962. The previous structure had been destroyed by

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German bombing in 1940, and the War Requiem was dedicated to the dead of the Second World War. Despite these obvious associations with that conflict, Britten juxtaposed readings from the poems of Wilfred Owen with the words of the traditional Latin mass, and, as Britten’s biographer Michael Oliver notes, the War Requiem was intended as a ‘threnody for the dead of all wars’.31 Owen’s poems were ideal because their frequent use of Latin complemented the words of the mass. They could also be used to express messages applicable not only to the First World War, but to war in general. As Dan Todman has suggested, this is perhaps partly because Owen’s poems are ‘much less specifically rooted in a description of trench warfare than, for example, Sassoon’s’.32 This does not entirely explain, however, why Britten should have chosen a First World War poet in the place of a Second World War poet. Britten’s decision again suggests that the later conflict was not seen to have produced the same quality of literature, or, perhaps most significantly, literature with such a direct and ‘appropriate’ message. Once again, the literature of the Great War was employed to speak for the experience of war in general. The souvenir programme produced to accompany the War Requiem also helps to explain why Owen was chosen. The introduction to the booklet, written by the music critic William Mann, explained that the twentieth century saw the waging of two world wars, prolonged, infinitely squalid, and ultimately inconclusive. They gave rise to a new spirit of doubt whether any country had the moral right to demand that its sons become murderers and the victims of murder . . . [Owen] warned but was not sufficiently heeded, and in 1939 Europe tumbled ignominiously into the second world war, one of whose few benefits has been to inspire . . . Britten’s masterly and profound War Requiem.33

Mann invokes the devastation of two world wars to confirm the ultimate futility of military conflict, and the need for literature to provide a warning. Owen’s poetry, of course, does just that. The programme also explains that Britten was a ‘Christian pacifist and zealous humanitarian’; the Requiem extolled these beliefs, and was therefore not simply a commentary on either world war but a broader denunciation of armed conflict. The applicability of Owen’s poetry to war in general, combined with a perceived lack of comparable Second World War poets, made his poetry entirely appropriate in this respect. The biblical allusions in Owen’s poetry may also have appealed to Britten. In poems such as ‘The Parable of the Old Man and the Young’ and ‘At a Calvary Near the Ancre’ – both of which were used in the War Requiem – Owen employs

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the language and imagery of the Bible. This wedding of anti-war sentiment with a Christian message was, as Mann illustrates, central to Britten’s outlook. It also appealed to the public. The War Requiem was a great success, and by 1964 the recording of the piece had sold 75,000 copies.34 In an increasingly secular age such success might come as a surprise: the influence of Christianity over people’s lives in Britain began to decline sharply during 1960s.35 Yet Owen’s poems perhaps filled a void left by traditional Christianity, speaking the sacred language of the Bible, but refashioning it for mid-twentieth century purposes.36 The Requiem’s popularity certainly helped to drive up sales of Owen’s poetry. In March 1963 Chatto & Windus confirmed that ‘because of the enormous success of Benjamin Britten’s “Requiem” . . . we had a run on the “Poems” and have had to put in hand an interim reprint of the existing edition’.37 The surge in the popularity of Owen’s poetry was also compounded by the revival of interest in the Great War which attended the upcoming fiftieth anniversary. The moment was therefore propitious for the publication in September 1963 of Cecil Day Lewis’s edition, The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen. As a poet and editor Day Lewis may have been motivated by literary concerns, but as a publisher he had clearly identified a lucrative commercial opportunity. On 25 September, eight days after publication, Ian Parsons, an influential editor at Chatto & Windus, enthused that ‘the new edition has gone off like a rocket, despite it being double the price of the old one.’ During that time the book had already sold 1,900 copies, and by December of that year this total had reached 5,000 – impressive figures for a poetry collection.38 The collection itself did not differ hugely from Blunden’s edition. Although Day Lewis added nineteen previously unpublished poems, these did not portray Owen in a markedly different light:  the most powerful and celebrated poems had already been published. Due to the existence of multiple, often undated drafts of many of these, Day Lewis did sometimes deviate from Blunden’s edition, but the changes are minor and do not significantly alter the character of the poems. Day Lewis’s introduction to the edition, however, which explains why he felt Owen was so important, is worth considering: ‘[Owen] made poems which radically changed our attitude towards war . . . it is Owen, I believe, whose poetry came home deepest to my generation, so that we could never again think of war as anything but a vile, if necessary evil’.39 Day Lewis evidently deemed Owen to be a crucial factor in fostering anti-war attitudes during previous decades. He suggests that this process began during the interwar years, when Owen’s poetry struck a chord among those of his generation. Day Lewis was born in 1904, and hence was just too young to have fought in the First World War. He

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therefore belonged to the same generation of readers as Christopher Isherwood and George Orwell, for instance, many of whom, as we have seen, came to identify with Owen’s poetry as young men during the interwar years. Day Lewis concedes, however, that wars may sometimes be necessary. This viewpoint was no doubt partly informed by the experience of the Second World War, which was widely considered an unavoidable conflict. Yet, given that Day Lewis is discussing Owen’s work, he also implies the First World War itself may not have been entirely pointless. Despite this concession, however, Day Lewis’s descriptions of the conflict largely conform to mythology of the First World War identified by historians today:  ‘to the soldier, those on the other side of the barbed wire were fellow sufferers; he felt less hostility towards them than towards the men and women who were profiting by the war, sheltered from it, or wilfully ignorant from its realities’.40 Here Day Lewis expounds two concomitant myths of the conflict: the alienation of the soldier from the civilian and the sense of commonality with the enemy. The prevalence of these sentiments is questionable, but Day Lewis’s statement demonstrates that such notions could become axiomatic for those seeking to understand the war through its poetry. The rise of Owen and similarly disillusioned poets evidently played a crucial role in reinforcing these myths, but the enhancement of such narratives did not necessarily entail the wholesale acceptance of the war’s mythology. A belief in the alienation of the soldier from the civilian did not necessitate a belief that the war was futile. The reasons for the success of Owen’s poems are better understood if we consider critical responses to the work. A revealing review in the TLS noted how the edition ‘arrives at a particularly opportune moment when our reappraisal of the First World War continues at full spate . . . The respect that falls to Owen is . . . in part for the “rightness” of his attitude towards the war in terms of our present day view of it’.41 Perceptions of the war undoubtedly evolved during the 1960s. Key figures in the arts, such as Day Lewis and Britten, had promoted anti-war sentiments, and these views had chimed with public sentiments. It is too simplistic, however, to view changing attitudes to the war as a direct consequence of the supposed cultural shifts of the 1960s. The above review refers to a ‘present day attitude’ but it is hard to gauge exactly when this came about. It is more likely to have been a gradual process of development, as reflected in the steady rise in Owen’s reputation in the decades before. The subsequent spike in the poet’s popularity perhaps reflects the dramatic revival of interest in the First World War as a consequence of the fiftieth anniversary, rather than a sudden shift in attitudes.

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Nevertheless, Owen’s view of war was undoubtedly less contentious in the 1960s than it had been before the Second World War. This may partly have been the result of Cold War tensions: the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – during which nuclear Armageddon had seemed a distinct possibility – was fresh in the memory. The avoidance of war therefore became a critical concern, and this may well have fostered sympathy with anti-war poetry. Reviews, however, did not explicitly make this connection, and the impact of the Cold War on popular attitudes to conflict is debatable. According to a Gallup survey in 1959, only six per cent of the population feared there would be a nuclear war by 1980. The Cuban Missile Crisis may have increased this figure, but during the general election of 1964, only seven per cent of the electorate listed defence policy as the most important issue of the contest.42 Cold War concerns, therefore, do not appear to have been a major factor in enhancing Owen’s reputation. Critical responses to Owen’s work, however, reflect a general sympathy for the poet’s message. Whereas the surge in disillusioned war literature of the ‘war books boom’ courted controversy, this was not apparent during the 1960s. With nuclear war looming, a pro-militarist viewpoint was untenable for many, and critics do not appear to have objected to Owen’s portrayal of the war. Bernard Bergonzi, writing in The Guardian, hailed Owen as the ‘greatest poet’ of the war, and there were no suggestions to the contrary.43 Perhaps the only indication that the media had not unanimously embraced Owen was the decision by the Sunday Telegraph not to print a favourable review of the new edition, which argued that ‘the best of Wilfred Owen’s work must stand for all time as the finest war poetry in the English language’.44 The journalist responsible, James Reeves, wrote to Ian Parsons enclosing his review, and noted: ‘I was paid for the review as being “not used” . . . Comment on the attitude of the press to poetry . . . on my part would be useless’.45 Perhaps the press were reluctant to print reviews of poetry: other papers appear not to have printed reviews of the edition, and reading poetry did remain a relatively highbrow pursuit.46 But it seems surprising that a broadsheet newspaper, which dedicated considerable space to covering the arts, would reject an article on these grounds. It is possible, therefore, that the Sunday Telegraph rejected Reeves’s review because of his sympathy for Owen’s lament for ‘the doomed youth of Europe’.47 Direct denunciations of the war may still have been unpalatable for certain sections of the press, particularly those, like the Sunday Telegraph, which were of a conservative persuasion. The fiftieth anniversary of the war continued to stimulate interest in Owen and the war poets. This was reflected in the publishing of poetry anthologies, many of which would play an important role in helping to construct the canon

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and its attendant mythology. The first of these was Brian Gardner’s Up the Line to Death:  The War Poets 1914–1918, published by Methuen in 1964. The title of the collection alone, drawn from Sassoon’s poem ‘Base Details’, betrays the memory of the war promoted by this anthology. In his introduction to the collection Gardner, a popular historian, firmly expounds the view that the war was horrific and perceived as such by those who participated in it: ‘the idea that the accounts of the war poets had no relevance to anyone’s experiences but their own is unconvincing; the lice, the cold, hunger, fear, wet, and misery were the same’.48 As we know today, Gardner’s suggestion that the poets spoke a universal truth about the war ignores the diversity of experiences engendered by the war. Gardner also conveys the narrative of developing disillusionment. He notes how Rupert Brooke expressed ‘the idealism of 1914’, before suggesting: ‘after the Somme it was never the same again. The heroic days were gone. The disillusion, already under way in the work of Siegfried Sassoon and Isaac Rosenberg came out in an angry flood’. The structure of the anthology is designed to reinforce this narrative. It begins with patriotic verses written upon the outbreak of war, before moving through sections of increasingly disillusioned poems from the front, reaching its apotheosis in the section ‘O Jesus, Make It Stop’, which includes five Wilfred Owen poems. The final sections include poems reflecting on the armistice in a melancholic and regretful, rather than celebratory tone. Gardner explicitly acknowledges this ‘is a journey I have tried to trace in this collection . . . with a beginning, a middle, and an end’.49 This story is perhaps an accurate mirror of the psychological journey undertaken by Owen, and particularly Sassoon, who, with twelve poems, is the best represented poet in the anthology, but it does not necessarily reflect the experiences of all those who took part. Gardner has imposed this narrative, selecting poems which fit it, and ignoring others that do not. Richard Aldington’s poem ‘Field Manoeuvres’ has even been placed erroneously alongside other poems from 1914, presumably because it depicts Aldington’s naivety while still training for combat, even though the poem was not in fact written until 1916, the year Aldington enlisted.50 The anthology therefore perpetuates the disillusionment narrative, expounding the myth that a common war experience was shared by all of those who participated in it. Chatto & Windus was similarly influential in constructing this memory of the war, with Ian Parsons compiling the anthology The Men Who March Away in 1965. Born in 1906, Parsons belonged to the same generation as Day Lewis, and he too acknowledged the importance of Owen during the interwar years for the literary figures of his cohort.51 Owen, with thirteen poems, is the best represented in the anthology. Other poets with complementary perspectives,

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such as Sassoon (with twelve poems), Rosenberg (with eight poems), and Blunden (with seven poems) also feature regularly. In his introduction, Parsons also explains how certain poets, such as John Masefield, were excluded because ‘they were quite unable to adjust themselves . . . to the grim realities of war’. He argues: ‘what men and women were experiencing and feeling, after the holocaust of the Somme, if not before, could no longer be given poetic expression by writers whose sensibilities had been conditioned in Edwardian days or earlier, and whose poetic conventions were out-worn even before the war started’.52 Parsons suggests that older poets used techniques which failed to do justice to the subject of war. But Parsons has also prioritized poets who expressed a particular perspective. Parsons’s intimation that the Somme is comparable to the Holocaust underscores his position: this use of powerful nomenclature pertaining to the Second World War to capture the horror of the First indicates that the collection is intended as a condemnation of war in general. Those poets who expressed romantic, patriotic, or glorifying sentiments have been excluded in favour of those whose poetry expressed horror, degradation and disillusionment. The selection is therefore conditioned as much by the dominant memory of the war as it is by literary concerns. As with Gardner, the organization of the book also reflects this. Traditional, patriotic representations of war are concentrated in the first section, ‘Visions of Glory’, which then gives way to sections concerned with ‘reality’, ‘pity’, and ‘protest’, for example. In doing so, the anthology charts a linear story from enthusiasm to disillusionment, rather than acknowledging the variety of sentiments that could be expressed at different times during the conflict. Central to this narrative, of course, is Wilfred Owen. The power of Owen’s poetry gained further purchase later in the decade, as wars in Vietnam and Cambodia were reported in the British press. Although these wars did not concern Britain directly, they prompted allusions to Owen. A Sunday Times article in 1968, for example, observed that in Vietnam ‘there is no Wilfred Owen to describe this war’, before explaining that ‘it would have to be an Owen. A Rupert Brooke in the age of napalm and revolutionary war would need to keep extremely quiet’.53 Owen’s vivid denunciations of the carnage of modern warfare were once again deemed applicable to war in general. The horrors of Vietnam seemed to provide further evidence of the bankruptcy of modern conflict, and Owen’s message was perfectly aligned with this perspective. Brooke’s idealism, by contrast, now seemed naïve. And yet, Brooke’s enthusiasm would perhaps have been well suited to the ‘smiling young recruits’ identified in a 1970 article reporting the war in Cambodia. But instead, the journalist was left to ‘wonder if anywhere there is a Cambodian Wilfred Owen’.54 The title of

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the article – ‘Oh What a Pathetic War’ – similarly evoked the mythology of the First World War. The influence of Owen on First World War fiction during the 1970s is also evident. The title of Susan Hill’s novel Strange Meeting (1971) was of course drawn from the Owen poem of the same name, and Hill admitted to being first inspired to write the novel after seeing a performance of Britten’s War Requiem.55 Owen was not her only inspiration: the developing disillusionment of the protagonist Hilliard clearly mirrors that of Sassoon during the war,56 and in a review of the book the TLS commented ‘that there is an effect of elegant pastiche in Strange Meeting’, noting the influence of Sassoon and Graves.57 Consequently, Strange Meeting reinforced and developed many of the key myths of the conflict, such as the inherent irony of the war, the narrative of disillusionment and the alienation of the soldier from the civilian.58 Owen’s rise to pre-eminence was further secured through the teaching of his poetry in schools. This was not an entirely novel practice. Owen’s poems, as we have seen, were studied in public schools during the interwar years, but in the 1960s they began to appear on public examination papers. At this stage there was no National Curriculum in Britain, but students taking public examinations at Ordinary Level (O Level) and Advanced Level (A Level) followed a syllabus set by an exam board in order to prepare for the examinations. A number of exam boards operated across the country, most of them run by universities. In English Literature, the texts studied by students varied depending on the exam board their school used, and although the works of Shakespeare were a constant presence, the exact selection of authors and poets differed from year to year. Nevertheless, the literature of the First World War, and especially the poetry of Wilfred Owen, appears to have become a regular, if not constant, feature on examination papers during this period. The exam papers of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), for instance, show that the poetry of Owen first appeared in their A Level examinations in 1961. Students were instructed to answer one of two broad essay questions based on Owen’s work. The first asked:  ‘ “Disenchantment, but not cynicism”. Does this strike you as Wilfred Owen’s prevailing outlook in Collected Poems?’ The second asked: ‘How does Wilfred Owen record “the shocks and amazements of immense suffering” ’?59 Students were therefore prompted to consider two key themes of Owen’s poetry – disenchantment and suffering – that characterized the emerging mythology of the First World War. Owen’s poetry would appear again on UCLES A Level exam papers in 1962, 1966 and 1967, and would continue to do so during the 1970s, appearing in

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1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975.60 Pupils also studied Harold Owen’s Journey from Obscurity as a set text in 1971. The questions on Owen’s poetry could vary considerably: some asked students to comment on a specific poem, whereas others prompted students to discuss Owen’s work more generally. Similarly, while questions sometimes focused on Owen’s representation of war, others were more concerned with aspects of style and poetic technique. The questions did not encourage students to accept Owen’s view of the war unquestioningly, and nor were the ambiguities in his poetry ignored:  in 1972, for example, a question asked students to ‘discuss the range of attitudes to war expressed in the poetry of Wilfred Owen’.61 But while these exam questions did not seek to advance a particular memory of the war, the inclusion of Owen in itself was significant: disenchantment and suffering had been privileged over patriotism and glory, and it was therefore this view of the war to which many students were exposed. Complementary texts were also taught alongside Owen. Other key works of First World War literature often appeared on UCLES A Level exam papers, particularly in the years that Owen’s work did not. In 1963 and 1964, for example, Graves’s Goodbye to all That and Sherriff ’s Journey’s End were set texts. Sherriff appeared again in 1970, as did Graves in 1971 and 1972. Although British writers were privileged, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms was also a set text in 1970 and 1971.62 Exam papers such as these were therefore as significant as critical surveys and anthologies in solidifying the canon of First World War literature. Just as these exam papers ensured students engaged with the established greats of English Literature – Chaucer and Shakespeare were essential components – so too did they introduce younger generations to a small corpus of texts from the Great War. In doing so, they helped also to ensure that these largely disenchanted representations came to be recognized as the conflict’s predominant literary legacy. Towards the end of the 1960s Owen’s poetry also began to appear in O Level examinations. Unlike A  Levels, which were usually taken at the age of eighteen by students preparing for university, O Levels were taken at the age of sixteen by a larger number of students, particularly after the school leaving age was raised to sixteen in 1972.63 This ensured that all pupils took some form of public examination – either the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE), or the more challenging O Level – before leaving school. English Literature was one of the most popular subjects here: in 1976, with the exception of English Language and Mathematics at O Level and CSE, more students took the English Literature O Level than any other subject at either O Level or CSE.64 Again, the content of these exams was determined by the individual exam boards, which led to considerable

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variation on the writers and texts studied. For instance, Owen’s poetry did not appear at all on UCLES O Level papers, perhaps because of its regular appearance on their A Level papers, but it did begin to appear on the exam papers of the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board (OCSEB) from 1967 onwards. In this year, pupils were asked to consider Owen’s poetry alongside Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Graves’s Goodbye to All That, with specific questions on each text accompanied by broader questions asking students to draw comparisons between the works. These comparative questions helped to consolidate a cohesive canon of First World War Literature. Students, were asked, for example, to comment on one of the recurring tropes in these works – including ‘gas; the contrast between England and the trenches; wounds; mental breakdown; patrolling’ – rather than being encouraged to contrast these canonical works with texts that deviated from familiar symbols and narratives.65 Owen’s poetry appeared again, in varying forms, in OCSEB O Level papers in 1970, 1973 and 1974.66 In 1970, Ian Parsons’s The Men Who March Away was a set text, with students expected to discuss a range of poets in the collection. This ensured a variety of perspectives were addressed in the exam paper, although, given Parsons’s selectivity, disenchantment was of course privileged. The questions, too, frequently ensured that students engaged with the war’s mythology, with one asking ‘which poet, or single poem, gives you the most horrifying picture of the 1914–1918 war?’67 Another question instructed students to compare Sassoon’s ‘Suicide in the Trenches’ with Owen’s ‘Futility’, telling examinees that ‘both the following poems were written to make people more aware of the horror and futility of war’.68 The war’s futility, in this exam paper, is taken to be selfevident, indicative of the growing power of this memory of the conflict at the beginning of the 1970s. These examination papers are not the only indicators how regularly Owen’s poetry was taught in schools. Although not all students studied Owen in preparation for public examinations, they may well have covered his poetry in class, particularly through the use of school textbooks and teaching anthologies. The educational market was profitable for publishers, as schools of course had to buy books in large quantities. Chatto & Windus, for instance, sought to exploit this market, publishing a school edition of the Edmund Blunden collection in 1966.69 Similarly, schools used Gardner’s and Parsons’s anthologies.70 The appearance of Owen and other war poets on exam papers no doubt fuelled the demand for these books, but these texts may well have been used for other teaching purposes. The teaching of the war poets was also perpetuated by the purchase of these anthologies in large numbers: once schools had invested heavily in them, they

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were likely to be used repeatedly, for teaching new texts would have required considerable investment in new stock.71 The war poets also began to appear in broader anthologies intended for use in schools. John Skull’s anthology Conflict and Compassion (1969) included Wilfred Owen’s ‘The Sentry’ and Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘Does It Matter?’ alongside other poems relating to twentieth-century conflict, most of which concerned the suffering and inhumanity of war. Stark images from recent conflicts, including an image of a mushroom cloud on its back cover, illustrate how contemporary concerns framed Skull’s selections.72 The poetry of Sassoon and Owen could therefore be employed effectively to advance an anti-war message amidst coldwar fears of nuclear Armageddon. In other instances, however, anthologies included war poetry simply because it was seen as an effective way to engage students  – particularly boys. Peter Brown’s anthology Man Alive! A  Book of Verse for Boys (1967), for example, included three poems by Sassoon in a section dedicated to war poetry through the ages.73 D. J. Brindley’s introduction to The Turning World (1974), an anthology aimed at pupils between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, also reveals that gendered assumptions could inform the selection of poets: As a young teacher I found it extremely difficult to interest children in poetry . . . After many mistakes, I discovered that among boys’ chief loves were machines: so I  introduced as many poems about cars, boats and planes as could be found. Next in popularity came various types of accidents, and from there it was but a short step to war. I searched through various anthologies, discovered Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and others virtually for the first time, and found my lessons suddenly becoming more successful.74

The decision to include Owen or Sassoon in teaching anthologies was not necessarily driven by an ideological agenda. Brindley includes their work because she believes boys will respond enthusiastically to poems filled with action, drama and incident. Despite the restrictive gender stereotypes at play here, disenchanted war poetry may have engaged students, regardless of their gender, for these reasons more than any other. During the interwar years, as we have seen, the young could find war literature of this nature alluring rather than horrifying. Brindley’s admission that she had only just discovered Owen and Sassoon illustrates that these poets were relatively recent introductions to the classroom in the 1970s, in part a consequence of renewed public interest in the First World War a decade earlier. This introduction of Owen’s work to the education system, through textbooks and exam syllabi, institutionalized his poetry, helping

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to establish a coherent national narrative of the First World War. It also transmitted the war’s mythology to younger generations, further embedding it in the British psyche. The teaching of Owen alongside other war poets and writers such as Sassoon, moreover, cemented the canon, helping to construct ‘the war poets’ as a collective phenomenon peculiar to Britain. Indeed, as Jay Winter has demonstrated, it is only in Britain that there exists this canonized collective of war poets. No such canon exists in France, for instance, despite the fact that poetry was of course written by French combatants too.75 The unveiling of a memorial to the war poets in Westminster Abbey in 1985 was a further testament to this collective identity. The memorial, which stands in the ‘Poets’ Corner of the Abbey, consists of a slate stone slab, on which the names of sixteen poets from the First World War are inscribed.76 Owen, however, speaks for this collective: also inscribed upon the slab, encircling the names of all the other poets, are his famous words from the draft preface he had written in 1918 for an intended volume of his poetry: ‘My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the Pity’.77 As in the War Requiem, the consonance between Owen’s poetry and the language of Christianity made his poetry ideal for inclusion within this sacred setting. The positioning of the memorial within a significant site of national memory, a focal point for religious and monarchical ceremony, again illustrates how war poetry, and especially the work of Owen, was institutionalized during this period. By the 1980s, Owen’s rise to preeminence had evidently been secured.

Vera Brittain If Owen’s reputation experienced a steady and then substantial rise to prominence after the Second World War, the trajectory of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth during this period was more complex. As we have seen in Chapter 3, the autobiography achieved both critical and commercial acclaim in the 1930s, when its crystallization of the war’s mythology meshed with an emerging pacifist sentiment. Brittain’s reputation, however, declined during the Second World War, and in 1958 her attempts to have Testament of Youth published as a Penguin paperback were unsuccessful. Penguin explained that this was because the book was too long to be published as a paperback, even in an abridged form, although they may have been more encouraging had they seen greater commercial potential in the work.78 Brittain did eventually secure a paperback reissue of the autobiography, with Grey Arrow Books republishing the work in 1960, but the book’s

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impact appears to have been minimal, despite the publisher’s promotional efforts, which highlighted its bestselling prowess of the 1930s.79 Relatively few reviews appear to have made the national press, and the TLS dismissed the work, suggesting that Brittain’s ‘chronicle of ardent Somerville feminism . . . is now badly dated’.80 Whether this reviewer intended to critique Brittain’s brand of feminism, or feminism in general, is unclear, but given the continuing struggles of women for equality during the 1960s, Testament of Youth was perhaps more relevant than this reviewer claimed. This dismissal of Brittain’s feminism, however, suggests that the contribution of women to the war effort remained largely unappreciated. Certainly, despite the upsurge of interest in the war, Testament of Youth, and other books by women, were largely overlooked by critics during the anniversary. The historian John Terraine reviewed a number of paperbacks about the First World War in 1964, but omitted Brittain’s account.81 Perhaps more glaring was its absence from Bernard Bergonzi’s critical survey Heroes’ Twilight (1965), which constructed a distinctly masculine canon. The exception to this was Oliver Edwards’s article in The Times in 1964, which listed Testament of Youth among its key works on the war.82 Brittain’s relative lack of success might surprise us. Testament of Youth complemented other cultural representations of the war during this period, and the anniversaries had seen a remarkable resurgence of interest in the conflict. Yet, unlike the poetry of Owen, which was direct and relatively accessible, Brittain’s book was a long and more challenging read. Her denunciation of Allied bombing during the Second World War had also severely damaged her reputation. Most significantly, the popular memory of the war during the 1960s remained predominantly masculine in character, despite the efforts of writers like Brittain in the 1930s. Representations of the conflict tended to highlight the suffering of the male combatant and the experience of the trenches, rather than the role of women. By 1980, however, Brittain’s status as one of the key figures in First World War literature had been secured. Testament of Youth had once again topped bestseller lists and in 1979 had been adapted into a BBC television series attracting millions of viewers. The publishing industry was central to this revival, with the feminist publishing house Virago reissuing the text in 1978. To employ Aleida Assmann’s terminology, this decision shifted Brittain’s text from the ‘Cultural Reference Memory’ to the ‘Cultural Working Memory’ of the First World War. Having receded to the fringes of First World War’s popular memory, the text was reintroduced to the canon.83 Founded in 1973, Virago began by publishing new works by female authors, and in 1978 introduced its Modern Classics range, dedicated to the rediscovery

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and reprinting of women’s literature. Carmen Callil, Virago’s director at the time, claims she had read Testament of Youth ‘and wept over it. I thought it a heartbreaking book – I had to publish it’. Regarding the market for the work, she also recalls how ‘there was no specific interest in women’s role in the First World War then, but there was an interest in women’s autobiography . . . We felt that their stories had disappeared . . . so reading autobiographies of women of an earlier age than ours – the 1970s – was a key part of our work’. While feminist concerns – and a desire to uncover forgotten authors – encouraged Callil to publish the work, an interest in promoting a particular memory of the First World War was not a major motivation. Narratives of female emancipation had begun to surface during this period, perhaps most notably in Arthur Marwick’s The Deluge (1965), but this does not appear to have influenced Callil. Rather, the primary reason for the book’s republication was Callil’s passion for the work; she also claims that ‘I always published with the view that if I loved it millions would’.84 Yet although Callil does not explicitly reference any financial drivers behind her decision to publish the book, a popular interest in women’s autobiography made the work a sound commercial prospect. The growth of the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and the introduction of Women’s Studies courses at many universities in both Britain and the USA, increased the demand for women’s autobiographies.85 This too might help to explain the resurgence of interest in Testament of Youth during this period. Callil recalls that Virago ‘promoted the book as part of a rich seam of feminist – and non-feminist – women’s lives and history’.86 The promotion of the work, however, did not advance a narrative of female emancipation, and nor did it stress an overt feminist agenda. Virago’s promotional literature described the book as a ‘passionate record of one woman’s experience of the First World War’, and claimed it was ‘one of the few records of a woman’s view of those years’, but it stressed that ‘in spirit and impact it is as powerful as those other classics of World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, Journey’s End and Goodbye to All That’.87 Brittain’s work was therefore measured against the canonical accounts of the trenches in an act of deference to the masculine memory of the war. Virago presented Testament of Youth as reinforcing a homogenous male narrative of the conflict, rather than offering an alternative perspective. The book’s marketing also conveyed the myth of the ‘lost generation’. Virago claimed that Brittain evoked ‘the gradual destruction of a generation’, before describing Testament of Youth as ‘a loving memorial to a lost generation’.88 The key features of Virago’s promotion did not therefore relate to female emancipation, or the validity of women’s war work, but rather to Brittain’s grief as a

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consequence of the deaths of the privileged young men she knew. The book’s cover reinforced this message too. The blurb provided a précis of the description in Virago’s promotional catalogue, while the front of the book employed a striking drawing of a red poppy.89 This, of course, was a recognizable symbol of sacrifice, a further allusion to ‘the lost generation’, rather than a specific reference to the female experience of the war. Equally significant was a preface written for the edition by Brittain’s daughter Shirley Williams, who at the time was a Labour MP and the Secretary of State for Education and Science.90 Williams too rehearsed the familiar tropes of the war’s mythology, stressing the conflict’s ‘static horror’, and its ‘terrible irony’, before evoking recognizable images of the Western Front: the ‘mud, barbed wire, broken trees and shattered bodies’. As in Virago’s promotional efforts, Williams also allied her mother’s account with the masculine memory of the war, quoting lines from Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘The Send Off ’. While Williams did note the work’s significance as a woman’s account of the war – incorrectly describing it as ‘the only book about the First World War written by a woman’ – the preface ultimately portrayed the book, in similar fashion to its blurb, as ‘an elegy for a generation’.91 Callil’s hope that other readers would love the book was vindicated. The press welcomed Testament of Youth, with many reviews explicitly regurgitating the mythology of the war. P. D. James, writing in the TLS, argued that ‘a generation died, and with it a civilization, messily, in horror, leaving an appalling legacy of guilt, retribution and disillusionment’. James’s rather hyperbolic statement attests to the power of the ‘lost generation’ narrative as it stood in the late 1970s. But James also recognized Brittain’s feminist agenda, stressing that it was important ‘women . . . should be reminded how many of the battles which Vera Brittain fought with such courage . . . throughout her life have still to be finally won’.92 James’s intimation that the struggle for women’s rights was ongoing, however, suggests she did not entirely endorse the notion that the First World War represented an advancement for women. Other reviewers similarly recognized the feminist significance of the book. While one reviewer in the magazine Over 21, a publication aimed at a female audience, described it as ‘one of the few records of a woman’s view’,93 Philippa Toomey, writing in The Times, ambitiously lauded it as ‘a formative influence on attitudes towards work and feminism’. Toomey’s article, tellingly titled ‘The Enormous Waste’, also expounded the notion of the ‘lost generation’, but Brittain’s feminist agenda was the primary concern. Toomey closed by arguing that ‘Brittain’s life and work went towards ensuring that women at least now have

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the freedom to choose what their lives will be like’.94 Unlike P. D. James, Toomey implies that the struggles of women during the First World War were of a substantial and lasting benefit. Despite the book’s success, it was not until a year later, with the television adaptation of the work, that Brittain’s reputation was significantly enhanced. Carmen Callil was again crucial in instigating this, and she recalls how she ‘managed to get various friends/acquaintances at the BBC to read it and this worked. The TV series made the book a great success’.95 Converting the text into a television series constituted another layer of interpretation and selection, partially shaped by the cultural concerns of the 1970s. As the BBC’s scriptwriter Jonathan Powell recognized, the book would also ‘need complete dramatization’. As an autobiography, the book was not replete with dialogue that could be directly translated to the screen, but Powell clearly identified the book’s key narratives from which the drama would arise: that of a ‘young girl struggling’ against patriarchal restrictions, and ‘the shattering effect of the war on herself, her family and her generation’.96 The series, which was divided into five parts, aired in the autumn of 1979. The BBC had liaised extensively with Shirley Williams and with Paul Berry, Brittain’s executor, both of whom ensured the adaptation was accurate. As such, the series was largely faithful to Brittain’s text, and the dialogue between the key characters was based substantially on Brittain’s recollections in the book – particularly her diary entries and correspondence with Roland Leighton and her brother. The series also effectively conveyed both the pacifist and feminist elements of the narrative. The medium of television, however, ensured that myths were driven home more powerfully. The use of archive footage at the beginning of each episode vividly evoked the atmosphere of the time, with explicit allusions to the war’s mythology. The first episode of the series, for instance, showed the middle classes leisurely sunning themselves during the mythical Edwardian summer.97 Later in the series, images of soldiers wading through the quagmire of Passchendaele clearly drew on the symbolism of the trenches.98 Although the series did justice to the range of emotions Brittain expressed in the text, subtle adjustments brought the adaptation more firmly into line with popular perceptions of the war. Whereas in the book Brittain had conceded that had she found Haig’s ‘Backs to the Wall’ speech stirring, for example, her reaction to the reading of the speech in the television series is largely indifferent.99 The now firmly entrenched myth of bungling generals may have influenced this creative decision by the BBC. The reading of First World War poetry at various intervals throughout each episode was equally significant. Sassoon’s bitterly ironic poem, ‘Does it matter?’,

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for instance, provided the backdrop to a scene during which Brittain visits the blinded Victor Richardson in hospital. Likewise, Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ appropriately accompanied a scene depicting a soldier writhing under the effects of poison gas. These moves allied Brittain’s account with other recognized canonical depictions, perpetuating the idea of a homogenous literary response to the war, and bolstering the masculine trench narrative. Rather than an alternative voice to the trench poets, Brittain was treated as complementary, and in the process the masculine memory of the war largely subsumed Brittain’s feminist agenda. The ultimate theme of the series was that of the horrific and senseless destruction of a generation of young men, and the grief this engendered. The series was a success, with viewing figures peaking at 2.6 million.100 As Callil had hoped, this stimulated sales of the book, and by December 1979, Testament of Youth topped the Sunday Times bestseller list.101 A crucial reason for this success was that the programme confirmed popular perceptions of the conflict. The rise in the status of Wilfred Owen and the steady decrease in opposing perspectives on the war over the last two decades had helped to create a sympathetic and receptive climate for the series. One review, for example, praised the use of poetry, noting that the series was ‘legitimately making use of associations that have been set up over the years by remembrance services’.102 These ‘associations’ are exactly what myths are: an accretion of symbols and narratives which have distilled over time. One of these was the notion of the ‘lost generation’, and, as in reviews of the book, this myth was frequently articulated without question. The Daily Mail, for example, spoke of a ‘gifted generation wiped out in the nightmares of Ypres and the Somme’.103 Brittain’s feminist agenda, however, does not appear to have been as widely appreciated. One reviewer, Peter Blackman, writing in The Listener, could not fathom why Brittain ‘was sufficiently special to warrant a series’,104 and while Corinna Adam, reviewing the series in the Radio Times, referenced ‘women’s emancipation’,105 she was one of few journalists to engage explicitly with this narrative. Nevertheless, some male viewers may have been more receptive to the adaptation than to the original book. One correspondent in The Spectator, conceded he had found the book ‘a bore’ and noted that ‘I may be the only person of masculine gender to have got to the end of it’. He admitted, however, to enjoying the television series, suggesting that ‘once shorn of the author’s own viewpoint and verbiage, the story gained wonderfully’.106 Brittain’s emotive portrayals of loss and sorrow, which were central to the ‘lost generation’ myth, appear to have been more successful than her feminist themes. While the television adaptation played an essential part in securing the reputation of Testament of Youth,

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it did not greatly expand a memory of the war that had been constructed on masculine terms.

Conclusion The fiftieth anniversary of the First World War inspired a re-engagement with the conflict, viewed in the light of the Second World War, and against a backdrop of Cold War tensions and developing anti-war sentiment. These factors should not be overstated, but they helped foster the perception that the conflict had been a mismanaged and futile bloodbath. The three case studies presented in this chapter, which address periods shortly before, during and after the 1960s illustrate the various ways in which writers, publishers and readers helped to cement, and in some cases contest, these narratives of the conflict. First, the republication of Good-bye to All That reminds us that veteran attitudes did not necessarily shift in alignment with popular attitudes. Rather, Graves’s revisions to his autobiography frequently resisted these narratives. Conversely, the dissemination of Wilfred Owen’s poetry, now largely in the hands of men with no experience of the Great War, significantly cemented the mythology of the conflict. The institutionalization of Owen’s poetry through the education system, moreover, ensured these narratives were transmitted to younger Britons. The resurgence of interest in Vera Brittain at the end of the 1970s had a similar effect. Reviewers of the book and the television series tended to accept that the conflict had been a futile disaster which had wiped out a generation. At the heart of these developments, once more, was the publishing industry. The impetus behind the republication of Good-bye to All That had not come from Graves, but from his American publishers. The further dissemination of Owen’s poetry had been driven by men such as Day Lewis and Parsons, who had been schooled in the war poets, and who were senior figures in the industry. And the rediscovery of Vera Brittain owed itself to the efforts of the feminist publishers Virago, who rescued Testament of Youth from obscurity and repositioned it at the centre of First World War memory. During the 1960s and 1970s, however, literary narratives, more than ever before, were disseminated via other cultural media. People may not have owned an anthology of Owen’s poems, but could still encounter his work through Britten’s War Requiem, or through the extensive media coverage of the war

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during the anniversary. Similarly, the influence of Vera Brittain extended far beyond the already impressive sales of Virago’s edition of Testament of Youth. Millions of television viewers tuned in to the BBC’s adaptation of Brittain’s autobiography, which in turn reinforced the significance of canonical poetry. The mythology of the war, therefore, had been secured by the 1980s, but it did not remain uncontested in subsequent decades.

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Remembering War, Resisting Myth: Literature, Memory and the Last Veterans

In his 1993 novel Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks recalls the horrors of the trenches from the perspective of a young subaltern. In a typically emotive scene, Faulks depicts the devastating effects of poison gas upon a soldier at a hospital on the Western Front. The soldier’s ‘infected lungs’, we are told, ‘began to burble and froth with yellow fluid that choked his words of protest as they lowered him into the stone bath outside’.1 This patent homage to Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is illustrative of how contemporary representations of the First World War were now greatly indebted to a literary canon – one typified by horror, futility and disillusionment – that had been gradually consolidated over the course of the twentieth century. Similarly, in her Regeneration trilogy (1991– 1994), Pat Barker reimagined the lives of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, integrating their life stories into a fictional narrative that addressed the issues of trauma, class, gender and sexuality.2 Both Birdsong and the Regeneration trilogy proved to be a boon for the publishing industry. Birdsong, published by Random House, occupied bestseller lists for thirty-three weeks and had sold over 400,000 copies by 1998.3 In 2003 it was named as Britain’s thirteenth most popular book in a BBC survey,4 and by 2016 over two million copies had been sold in Britain, with three million sold worldwide.5 Although not quite as successful as Birdsong, Barker’s novels, first published by Viking Press, have also sold in impressive numbers, with the trilogy’s final instalment, The Ghost Road (1995), occupying bestseller lists for twenty weeks and winning the Booker Prize. By 1998 it had sold over 250,000 copies.6 Birdsong and the Regeneration trilogy are also now taught on GCSE and A Level

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syllabi, often alongside the works of Wilfred Owen.7 Such moves have helped secure Faulks and Barker themselves within the canon of First World War literature, further stimulating sales of their books. The commercial appeal of these works was indicative of the sustained popular interest in the First World War towards the end of the twentieth century, itself a consequence of the widespread expansion of the heritage industry, and a characteristic of what Jay Winter has termed the ‘memory boom’ – a growing desire in many countries to preserve the memory of the traumatic events of the twentieth century. Increased museum attendance and the growing popularity of family history, in addition to the proliferation of cultural representations such as Birdsong and Regeneration, were all products of this ‘memory boom’.8 Despite their popular appeal, these novels also stand accused of perpetuating and reinforcing the mythology of the First World War. Indeed, part of their success also lies in the fact that these books confirmed existing popular perceptions of the conflict. Gary Sheffield, for example, has targeted Faulks’s and Barker’s novels, arguing that they ‘give a lopsided, incomplete and therefore misleading view of the First World War’.9 This is unsurprising. The literary treatment of the war by this stage was primarily the preserve of writers with no personal memory of the war, and it is little wonder that they were influenced by the canon of disillusioned war literature. Myths were therefore recycled and reinforced. And yet, even by the millennium, the First World War was not exclusively an imagined event: as the number of Great War veterans in Britain dwindled, the personal testimonies of the surviving few began to take on an increased significance. Since the 1960s, as veterans began to retire, there had been efforts to record the oral testimony of those who had fought in the war. When producing The Great War television series, for instance, the BBC had recorded the recollections of numerous veterans, and the Imperial War Museum, realizing that veterans were beginning to die out, began creating an extensive archive of oral history interviews.10 Popular histories, centred on oral testimony, such as Martin Middlebrook’s The First Day on the Somme (1971) and Lyn Macdonald’s They Called It Passchendaele (1978), also helped to preserve these voices for posterity.11 By the millennium, however, only a handful of veterans remained. Two of these men, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham, committed their memories to paper with the help of collaborators, and the autobiographies which resulted – Harry Patch and Richard Van Emden’s The Last Fighting Tommy (2007) and Henry Allingham and Dennis Goodwin’s Kitchener’s Last Volunteer (2008)  – reveal the intersections between personal memory and collective memory since the millennium.

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Dan Todman has argued that the rapid decline in the numbers of veterans from the 1970s onwards helped to cement the mythology of the war, as many of these men had previously vocally resisted notions of futility and unremitting horror.12 But to what extent did Britain’s last veterans continue to resist these narratives? This chapter investigates the role veterans played in engaging with the war’s memory since the millennium. I begin by considering the promotion and construction of Patch’s and Allingham’s accounts, before examining how their recollections interact with the key myths of the conflict. Finally, I explore the extent to which these myths conditioned popular responses to their books.

Harry Patch and Henry Allingham Harry Patch (1898–2009) was the most famous and conspicuous of the last remaining veterans in Britain, and attracted considerable media attention before his death at the age of 111. Conscripted at the age of 18 in 1916, Patch served as a private in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. Having proven himself a skilled marksman, he was assigned to a Lewis gun team and fought in the Flanders offensives during the summer of 1917. In September 1917, during the battle of Passchendaele, Patch was injured by shrapnel and sent home in what would prove to be his last experience of front-line combat. In 1998, shortly after his hundredth birthday, Patch was tracked down by the historian Richard Van Emden, who had been gathering together the oral testimonies of over one hundred First World War veterans. The research contributed to the making of the BBC documentary and accompanying book Veterans (1998), which coincided with the eightieth anniversary of the conflict, and reflected a growing interest in the increasingly rare figure of the First World War veteran. Patch, though initially reluctant, agreed to take part. Following this contribution he went on to make numerous public appearances at commemorative events, and by virtue of his longevity took on a powerful symbolic role as the final remaining survivor of the trenches. As the First World War slipped further out of lived memory, Patch’s testimony began to assume a greater value. In the summer of 2006, Van Emden conducted a series of interviews with Patch, from which he built a detailed biographical picture. The result was The Last Fighting Tommy, published by Bloomsbury in August 2007. Founded in 1986 by Nigel Newton, Bloomsbury expanded rapidly during the 1990s and 2000s, developing extensive lists in both fiction and nonfiction, with works of popular history, and particularly those in the lucrative area of military history, well represented.13 The commercial possibilities of Patch’s

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account were clear: its publication coincided with the ninetieth anniversary of the battle of Passchendaele, and Patch’s status as the last veteran of the trenches made him, in Van Emden’s words, ‘more marketable’.14 The trench as an iconic image, central to First World War memory, ensured that Patch’s story resonated with a wide audience, and the promotion of the book engaged with this symbolism: Bloomsbury described the book, on its front cover, as ‘the life of Harry Patch, the only surviving veteran of the trenches’.15 Henry Allingham (1896–2009), however, had not fought in the trenches of the Western Front. Unlike Patch, he had volunteered his services in 1915, joining the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) as an Air Mechanic Second Class. Allingham was sent aboard a trawler involved in reconnaissance for the Battle of Jutland, before being posted to a squadron near Dunkirk in September 1917. At this stage the RNAS was involved in assisting the army in the offensives around Ypres. Allingham served as a mechanic behind the lines but also flew above the trenches, where he would sit behind the pilot acting as an observer, bomber or gunner. Allingham’s was not, therefore, the ‘typical’ First World War experience. Having not experienced trench combat, it is hard to imagine his story being published at an earlier date: the war in the air is not as well documented overall, and those accounts which were published during the interwar years, such as V. M. Yeates’s Winged Victory (1934), were from the perspective of daredevil pilots. Like Patch, Allingham had been living in relative seclusion until he was discovered and encouraged to share his story. In this case it was Dennis Goodwin who was responsible for bringing Allingham into the public domain. Goodwin was neither a professional historian nor writer; rather, he had been working in the care-home profession, during which time he had met numerous aging men who had taken part in the First World War. Realizing that many of these men had no one to talk to who had shared their experiences, Goodwin established the First World War Veterans Association in 1987. The organization arranged trips to the battlefields and provided opportunities for fellow veterans to meet one another. Through his new contacts, Goodwin discovered Allingham, and soon began visiting him regularly in his home. Although initially reticent, under Goodwin’s encouragement Allingham found that ‘gradually it seemed more disrespectful to ignore what had gone on than to talk about it’.16 As veteran numbers dwindled, Allingham’s public exposure, like Patch’s, began to rise, and it was not long before Allingham was appearing at commemorative events across the country. Allingham began to embrace his new identity, and noted how ‘when I found out Harry Patch had written his life story, I asked Dennis to help me do the same’.17 Goodwin readily assisted him. By 2008,

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Allingham was also the oldest ever British man, and he too began to assume celebrity status as a symbol of the First World War. The time was ripe for the publication of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, which Mainstream published later that year. Founded in Edinburgh in 1978 by Bill Campbell and Peter MacKenzie, Mainstream specialized in commercial non-fiction publishing until the firm’s closure in 2013.18 Allingham’s book needed its unique selling point, but unlike with Patch’s story, the symbolism of the trench could not be so easily utilized. Allingham had, however, voluntarily enlisted, and the still culturally pervasive figure of Lord Kitchener could be employed to market the book. Kitchener, who oversaw the voluntary recruitment of men to the armed forces during the first few months of the war, and whose face adorns a now-iconic recruitment poster, was the symbol most directly applicable to Allingham’s story.19 Publishers therefore sought to exploit recognized symbols of the First World War, and in the process helped further to embed them in the public consciousness.

Memory, myth and autobiographical collaboration The collaborative construction of these autobiographies raises questions of authorship, which complicate the interaction between myth and memory in these texts. Superficially, it appears straightforward to determine authorship, as in both texts the collaborators’ contributions are separated from the main text, in which the narrative voice ‘belongs’ to the veteran. In both works the collaborators’ sections situate the veterans’ experiences within a wider historical context. But of course the demarcation between veteran and collaborator is actually less transparent, as these texts are both transcribed oral histories: we know that the veteran’s narrative voice has been assembled from an interview process. This voice is therefore not entirely voluntary; it has been framed, or ‘coaxed’, by the questioning of the interviewer.20 Moreover, with their advanced years and poor eyesight, these veterans have of course relied on the collaborator to construct a written narrative from their oral testimony. Notions of authorship are further complicated because it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which the collaborators have prompted the veterans’ words with leading questions, and the extent to which these veterans have spoken freely on a subject. It is also uncertain how faithfully the collaborators have replicated the veterans’ words in the written text. We can therefore identify three layers of collaboration: the distinct, historical passages; the framing of the narrative through interview questions; and the transcription from oral to written narrative. The

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collaborative element of these autobiographies therefore casts doubt over how closely these accounts reflect the personal memories of the veterans concerned. Personal memories are far from impervious to the influence of myths. Memories are coloured and distorted by the intervening years, and the retention of certain memories at the expense of others often reflects dominant cultural concerns. As the oral historian Alistair Thomson has argued, ‘our memories are risky and painful if they do not fit the public myths, so we try to compose our memories to fit with what is publicly acceptable’.21 Similarly, the structuring of memories into narratives opens them up to manipulation. Paul Ricœur argues that memories can become ‘ideologized’, as a consequence of the ‘selective function of the narrative . . . consisting from the outset in a strategy of forgetting as much in a strategy of remembering’. The collaborative element of these works can also distort these memories. Ricœur suggests that when the rehearsal of memories is ‘aided by the intervention of a third party . . . remembering is also set on the path of the narrative, whose public structure is obvious’.22 Personal memories are therefore framed by public discourses. The collaborators’ questioning may have encouraged the veterans to position their memories within certain dominant narratives, and the transcription from the oral to the written word may have imposed a particular structure that was not initially present. While accepting that it is impossible to disentangle personal memory from the influence of myth, however, we should not assume the former is always entirely subsumed by the latter; personal memories often resist and deviate from dominant narratives. Tensions may arise which prevent memories from being composed in the manner Thomson describes.23 Indeed, memory is shaped equally by psychological factors: what we choose to remember, and how we remember it, is shaped by our own sense of identity, and we mould our memories so that they fit our sense of self.24 As the historian Michael Roper has observed, there is often ‘a range of possible personal motivations for remembering’.25 These too might lead veterans to resist dominant narratives in their personal recollections. With these issues in mind, let us now consider the extent to which these two autobiographies reinforce or deviate from the recurring tropes of First World War mythology.

Enlistment A journey from youthful enthusiasm and naivety towards disillusionment and despair is a central narrative to the mythology of the First World War, and Allingham’s account corroborates this impression. He recalls how he and his

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peers ‘were all full of patriotism, willing to fight for king and country’, and suggests this was a pervasive phenomenon: ‘anyone you spoke to wanted to join up and fight the Germans. There was also the sense of adventure and believing we were in an exciting time’.26 Allingham alludes to many of the motivations that encouraged young men to enlist,27 all of which are redolent of a grim irony given the course of the war. Volunteer numbers were indeed very high, numbering around 2.4 million.28 Between the outbreak of war on 4 August and 22 August over 100,000 men had enlisted, many of whom probably were motivated by patriotic enthusiasm.29 The scale of this unprecedented phenomenon, combined with the tragic irony that such images evoke in retrospect, helps to explain their cultural endurance. Patch, however, insists he was not motivated to enlist: History will tell you that when war broke out everyone went mad, singing and marching about, welcoming the war with Germany. It will also tell you that all the men ran to join up as soon as they could, and that many boys aged sixteen and seventeen enlisted. Well, I was aged sixteen in 1914 and I didn’t . . . I didn’t welcome the war at all.30

However iconic the images of young men queuing up to enlist, this could not be described as the typical experience. Around 2.5 million men who served in British army had been conscripted.31 Although conscription was not introduced until 1916, and some of these men would have been too young to fight at the outbreak of war, many could have enlisted in August 1914 had they wished to do so. We should not assume, therefore, that the majority of men had been swept up in patriotic fervour. Wilfred Owen, for instance, did not immediately sign up upon the war’s outbreak, and had dithered before eventually doing so in October 1915.32 Patch evidently had no desire to enlist at all. In the above quotation Patch uses the word ‘History’ to denote the popular narrative of war enthusiasm, but recent historical research has helped to dispel the idea that most of the nation greeted the war in this manner. Adrian Gregory, for example, has argued that ‘the evidence for mass enthusiasm at the time is surprisingly weak’. As Gregory demonstrates, many of those who did volunteer in August were motivated for other reasons. With high levels of unemployment at the time, many simply enlisted for financial reasons, for example. Moreover, recruitment actually peaked during the first week of September, not at the outbreak of war. Between 30 August and 5 September, 179,901 men volunteered their services. This was after news of the British retreat from Mons had reached home, convincing many men the war was now necessary for national defence.33

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Between them, therefore, Patch and Allingham reflect something of the broad range of reactions to the outbreak of war. Allingham’s suggestion, however, that the rest of the male population shared his enthusiasm suggests the war’s mythology has shaped his memory. The fact that Patch feels the need to address the disparity between his memory and the popular narrative is also a testament to the strength of the latter. Patch’s reflections upon his ultimate conscription into the army in 1916 are consistent with his recollection of the war’s outbreak. He claims that ‘I didn’t want to go and fight anyone but it was the case of having to . . . I wasn’t at all patriotic’.34 His rejection of patriotism here contrasts sharply with Allingham’s account. As with his refusal to enlist in 1914, Patch’s reluctance to go to war undercuts the notion that all men naively and enthusiastically signed up.

Combat While Patch’s lack of enthusiasm for war might conflict with popular narratives of enlistment, his attitude does support the impression that soldiers on both sides were thrown into battle despite a lack of mutual animosity. In this sense, his memories are in keeping with narratives of emerging disillusionment. Patch’s desire to emphasize his aversion to killing is similarly consistent with the mythology of the war: he recalls a pact he made with the fellow members of his Lewis gun team, whereby they agreed ‘we wouldn’t kill, not if we could help it’.35 Such an anecdote sits more easily alongside recent perceptions of the conflict than do the stories of blood-thirsty martinets as told by Sapper or Gilbert Frankau, for example, although, as historians have demonstrated, some soldiers did in fact enjoy killing.36 On the other hand, references to killing, or an aversion to it, are largely absent from Kitchener’s Last Volunteer. When acting as a mechanic based behind the lines, this was not part of Allingham’s job, and when in the air combat was largely impersonal. With regard to the dropping of bombs, for instance, Allingham recalls how there was ‘no art to this – just plain luck’.37 While killing is intrinsic to warfare, it was not necessarily an integral part of every individual’s experience. When these texts do represent combat, however, they betray the influence of the war’s mythology. This, to some extent, is inevitable. As the literary critic Kate McLoughlin suggests, writers are often most successful when they avoid trying to express the inexpressible, for when ‘words are used’ there is a ‘temptation to

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repeat outworn ones’.38 This helps to account for the rehearsal of myths in war literature. But even if it were possible adequately to represent combat, memories, however deeply embedded, are distorted by the intervening years. In a passage which appears to have been prompted by Van Emden’s questioning, Patch seems at a loss for words, implying there is little more he can say to enrich our existing preconceptions: ‘how did I feel? Well, how would anyone feel? It doesn’t matter how much training you’ve had, you can’t prepare for the reality, the noise, the filth, the uncertainty and the calls for stretcher-bearers’.39 Patch ultimately falls back upon trench signifiers, and this is understandable given that many writers have grappled with the incommunicability of war experience. Although Patch must have experienced these elements of the war, his inability to break away from familiar linguistic symbols illustrates the power of the war’s mythology. Patch nevertheless paints a vivid picture of his experience at Passchendaele during the summer of 1917, though his recollections confirm many of the stereotypes of that battle. Patch remembers sinking into the mud of the trenches, and recalls how ‘the place used to stink like hell’.40 Such images have become synonymous with trench warfare, and are therefore potent symbols of the war itself. Needless to say, not all battles were so muddy. No doubt this was a memorable feature of the battle for Patch, but the later symbolic power of these images may well have influenced his decision to focus on them. It is also likely that Van Emden, realizing their cultural resonance, encouraged Patch to discuss them. Mud and horror sell books about the First World War, and Van Emden, realizing the marketability of Patch’s story, was clearly aware of this. Dennis Goodwin, too, engaged with the symbolism of the trenches, and his narrative voice intrudes far more frequently than Van Emden’s, as if to compensate for the imagery absent from Allingham’s personal recollections. Allingham, of course, does not touch on the central tenets of ‘the trench experience’ as thoroughly because he did not experience them first-hand. Despite being posted to the Western Front during 1917, Allingham worked behind or above the lines while in the RNAS. He was not entirely safe, however, when on the ground; depots and training camps were targeted by enemy artillery and aircraft, but clearly the danger and discomfort were not as extreme as in the trenches. Goodwin, however, feels obliged to discuss the trenches and ultimately falls back upon well-worn signifiers: ‘there were rampant brown and black rats, nits, lice, trench fever and trench foot . . . Assaults on the senses sometimes brought about mental, as well as physical, collapse’.41 The list-like prose here reflects the regurgitated nature of these trench symbols.

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Yet Allingham himself also underscores the precedence of the trench experience: ‘it was these men in the trenches who won the war, in my view. Everybody did their bit, but we couldn’t all be in the trenches and they did very well. I think they were the ones who had the most hardship’. Goodwin may well have prompted Allingham to discuss the infantrymen in the trenches. Goodwin admitted that when the two of them fielded questions from school children about the war, he would ‘try to steer Henry into relating the incident I had in mind once a question had been asked’.42 Realizing the importance of the trenches to a marketable narrative, Goodwin may have similarly coaxed this response from Allingham. Indeed, the passage was deemed so appealing that it was also used as the epigraph to the final paperback edition of The Last Fighting Tommy.43 Ironically, Allingham’s account, which helps to transcend the dominance of the trench narrative, was ultimately used to reinforce it. The emotive power of trench warfare, and the host of myths attached to it, can often obscure the diversity of war service. Allingham is therefore keen to rescue his contribution to the war effort from obscurity. His attempts to forge his identity around his distinct experiences in the RNAS, however, did not align with popular narratives of the war. Concomitant to the mythology of trench warfare is the brutality of combat; few accounts since the ‘war books boom’ have avoided depicting in graphic detail battlefield injury and death. Patch’s recollections of front-line experience are no different: ‘a shell had hit him and all his side and his back had been ripped up, and his stomach was out on the floor, a horrible sight. Others were blown to pieces . . . and there I was, only nineteen years old. I felt sick’.44 Patch’s account of himself as a young man thrown into a slaughterhouse echoes the atmosphere of canonical works such as All Quiet on the Western Front, and such descriptions of course do little to dispel notions of relentless horror. Allingham’s account, however, suggests that while injury was not uncommon, it was not always so severe, particularly for those in less dangerous roles. Recalling his injury when his depot came under fire, Allingham recalls that ‘a sliver of shrapnel had grazed me. There’s not much of a scar now. It wasn’t all that bad’.45 Such a passage in a recent work of First World War fiction would seem anti-climactic, although of course not all soldiers were brutally maimed during their service.46 There are nevertheless clear and understandable reasons why gruesome imagery has come to dominate autobiographical accounts. First, such experiences, by virtue of their shocking and extraordinary nature, are more noteworthy. Second, as Patch himself states, ‘going over the top . . . overshadowed much of the mundane, ordinary life that we lived out of the line’.47 This too is unsurprising; psychologists have proven that memory traces from traumatic experiences

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are more deeply embedded, and this helps to explain why descriptions of such events frequently punctuate accounts of trench warfare.48 Whereas recent fictional accounts may focus on the horror through a desire to shock, entertain or meet popular expectations, psychological reasons may also account for these tropes in autobiographical works. The influence of popular narratives, however, seems to have influenced Patch, and Van Emden appears to have highlighted horrific moments and encouraged their recall: ‘there are the stories that Harry himself recalls but many had to be triggered by me’. Van Emden conducted considerable research around the events in Patch’s life, so he could ‘go primed with stories that Harry, once prompted, recalled with his usual alacrity’.49 And the power of myth may well have encouraged the retention, and shaped the recollection, of these memories. While traumatic memories are more likely to be deeply embedded, they also tend to be more distorted and less coherent.50 The organization of such memories into a logical narrative may therefore have required the influence of external factors, in particular Van Emden’s questioning.

Generals Both Patch and Allingham address the myth of incompetent generalship, and there appears to have been some demand upon the two veterans to contribute to the relevant debates here. Patch, for instance, suggests that people expected him to comment authoritatively on the subject: I am often asked what I thought of [Haig], as if I must have an opinion. All I can say is that sometimes Haig’s intelligence was good, other times it was rotten. But we didn’t talk about him amongst ourselves . . . I  know people think we must have spoken about him, but I can’t remember doing so . . . We weren’t there to criticize; we knew when they’d gone wrong.51

Patch refuses to submit to the power of popular perceptions: he does not endorse the view that the rank and file were ‘lions led by donkeys’, and his appraisal of Haig is equivocal despite the damning portrayals of the Field-Marshal which have proliferated since the 1960s. Patch’s testimony lends weight to Neil Barr and Gary Sheffield’s suggestion that the rank and file were largely indifferent to Haig, and did not necessarily exhibit any great bitterness towards him.52 Although antipathy towards the higher command was expressed at the time, such as in Sassoon’s scathing poem, ‘The General’ (1917), Patch’s comments suggest that not all soldiers were opinionated in this regard.

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Allingham’s account does not lend itself so readily to a discussion of Haig; nowhere does he assess the field-marshal’s leadership. But due to the centrality of Haig’s reputation as a butcher to the war’s mythology, Goodwin is obliged to comment. Rather than acknowledging recent revisionist reappraisals of his leadership, Goodwin falls back upon the ‘lions and donkeys’ myth when discussing the Battle of Passchendaele: ‘Haig . . . a cavalryman, continued to expect horses to win the day, regardless of the changing face of war. Despite the climbing body count . . . and the patent lack of success of the offensive, Haig refused to call off the attack’.53 As we have seen, many historians would consider this to be a largely inaccurate perception of Haig, although the debate over his conduct rumbles on.54 In fleeting historical summaries, however, there is a tendency to rely on a kind of mythic shorthand, rather than more thorough research, and the potential nuance of personal memory is at risk of dilution by reductive historical summaries. The greater restraint shown by Van Emden, however, reduces this occurrence in Patch’s work.

Post-war memories How do these veterans reflect on the armistice? In this respect, both Patch’s and Allingham’s accounts diverge from the works of the disillusionment canon, which often present 11 November 1918 as a distinctly sombre affair. In Goodbye to All That, for example, Robert Graves recalls ‘his cursing and sobbing and thinking of the dead’, upon hearing the news of the armistice.55 Rather than feeling any sense of joy, Graves is consumed by the perceived waste and futility of the conflict. Likewise, in Sassoon’s poem ‘Everyone Sang’ (1919), any happiness that might be felt at liberation from war is tempered; although in the first line ‘everyone burst out singing’, Sassoon concludes by noting that ‘the song was wordless; the singing will never be done’.56 In Testament of Youth, Britain recalls being in a far from celebratory mood when she heard news of the armistice: ‘I went on automatically washing the dressing bowls in the annex outside my hut . . . The war was over; a new age was beginning; but the dead were the dead and would never return.’57 Other events have become emblematic of the tragic irony of 11 November: on this day Wilfred Owen’s mother received the news of her son’s death. Patch’s recollections, however, are rather different, and he recalls ‘the feelings of joy . . . and relief that the war was over’. The day was not one of solitary reflection for him either: ‘that night we had hell’s delight, a real party’.58 Though Patch would come to denounce the war as a futile tragedy, he refuses to

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allow this popular narrative to shape his recollection of the Armistice Day celebrations. Patch’s recollection is in greater accord with the historical record than the literary myth. Adrian Gregory has shown how for most the Armistice was a day for rejoicing,59 and ample evidence suggests the day was marked by jubilation for many. The Gunner Sidney Edwards, for example, who had just returned to England having been sent home wounded, recalled how the ‘scenes . . . were indescribable. Excitement was rife. Church bells were ringing and flags were flying’.60 And although Allingham did not engage in the Armistice Day revelry, his reasons were more prosaic: ‘I just wanted some undisturbed sleep’.61 Despite his Armistice Day celebrations, Patch found it difficult to adjust to civilian life: ‘I was thoroughly disillusioned . . . why did we fight? I asked myself that, many times. At the end of the war the peace was settled round a table, so why the hell couldn’t they do that at the start, without losing millions of men?’ Patch’s assertion of disillusionment and futility chimes with the war’s mythology, but we should consider how such a perspective came about. Given that such views were not prevalent in the immediate aftermath of the war, Patch’s memories may well have been shaped by later representations. Patch also states in this autobiography that he rarely talked about the war for much of his life, and he professes to have had little interest in or understanding of politics as a young man.62 His questioning of the conflict is therefore likely to have been a more recent viewpoint, inspired by his reengagement with it in later life, and within a popular climate more inclined to dismiss the First World War as futile. Van Emden’s questioning may also have encouraged Patch to frame his memories within a template of post-war disillusionment. To be sure, Patch did not initially reflect fondly on the war. No doubt he was deeply affected by his experiences, particularly losing his friends, and this inevitably fuelled bitterness. Whether Patch held such a coherent pacifist perspective immediately after the war, however, is open to debate. With his critique of the war Patch diverges significantly from Allingham, who reflects on the conflict, like many veterans did, with a sense of pride: ‘I’m extremely proud of the achievements made by the RNAS . . . we certainly made an impact . . . Without those early days and our scrappy little biplanes, the First World War couldn’t have been won. It was wonderful to have been part of it and I’ll never forget the men whom I served with and those who died in action’.63 Such a reflection conflicts with myths of futility and disillusionment. Seeing the experience of the First World War described as ‘wonderful’ in an era which emphasizes its horror may surprise many readers. Allingham also attempts to rescue his less well-documented service from obscurity. Although he recognizes

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the importance of the soldiers in the trenches elsewhere in the book, here Allingham stresses the vital role played by the RNAS. The cultural emphasis on the ‘trench experience’ may have diminished interest in other aspects of the war, but Allingham is determined to highlight the value of his and his comrades’ contribution. Later in the book, Allingham further conveys the validity of his war service, comparing it favourably to the recent war in Iraq: ‘it was not the same as my war. We were fighting for our country and our homes and that is completely different’.64 Allingham’s choice of language is telling here – he takes possession of the First World War, underscoring his sense of pride at having taken part. Unlike Patch, whose identity was constructed around his pacifism, Allingham assumed the position of the proud and patriotic veteran. And again he counters the myth of futility, characterizing the First World War as a just and necessary endeavour to protect Britain against an aggressive enemy. Patch, however, continues to strike a disillusioned note, particularly when he discusses the impact of the war upon his village of Combe Down in Somerset. His childhood recollections of the area conjure an image of a simple and parochial rural lifestyle, detached from the wider world.65 Unlike Allingham, Patch returned to his community after he was demobilized, and the unveiling of the local war memorial served as a powerful reminder of how the war had intruded into this insular environment: The names of my close friends are on these plaques:  Lionel Morris, Stanley Pearce, Charles Wherret, Harold Chivers, and my own cousin, Fred Patch, too, and dozens more who were no more than acquaintances around the village, people whose families I spoke to – the butcher, the chimney sweep, a farmer, a carpenter. They had all lost sons in the war, most in their teens and early twenties.66

This passage resonates with the war’s mythology: as a typical, sleepy English village, Combe Down seems representative of the pre-war rural idyll, and how it has been irrevocably shattered by war. Patch not only reinforces the perception of the war as a profound rupture, but he also alludes to the ‘lost generation’. His listing of friends and associates complements the impression that a generation was wiped out, and Combe Down’s typicality suggests this was on a national scale. Such an illusion would not be created if it were not for the fact that this narrative was already in place, with works such as Testament of Youth instrumental in constructing the myth.67

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Modern memories Patch’s and Allingham’s reflections on the later years of their lives provide further evidence of both the reinforcement of, and resistance to, popular narratives. In November 2004 Patch met the veteran Charles Kuentz who had fought in the German trenches during the battle of Passchendaele. The media flocked to the event, recognizing its symbolic significance. The Daily Mirror, for example, noted that ‘86 years after the Great War, hostilities end’.68 But the resultant handshake between the two men not only embodied reconciliation between two countries which had been at war twice during these veterans’ lifetimes; it also evoked the myth of commonality between soldiers on either side of no-man’s land. Similarly, in 2006 Allingham met Germany’s oldest veteran, the 109-yearold Robert Meier, who had fought on the Somme. The Daily Mirror emphasized the warmth between the two veterans, and observed how ‘the pair clutch hands . . . like old comrades rather than former foes’.69 As we have seen, canonical works often highlight sympathy and compassion for the enemy, choosing to direct hatred towards civilians or politicians instead. The ‘Christmas Truce’ of 1914, when British and German troops in various sectors of the Western Front agreed to suspend hostilities, is a potent symbol of this commonality. The essential humanity of the enemy, and their shared status as victims, has also been stressed, perhaps most memorably in Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Strange Meeting’. The cordial meetings between British and German veterans appeared to underscore this, pointing to the absurdity of the conflict. Despite the intervening years, and the growing strength of this narrative, Patch’s memories appear to have remained resilient: ‘I never felt sorry for the Germans during the war, but I did for Charles. I felt sorry for what he had to go through; no one deserved to go through that war’.70 Although Patch admits to sympathy for Kuentz in 2004, he does not allow this experience to colour his memories; he does not pretend to have felt sorry for the Germans during the war. Such a view aligns less easily with the myth, of course, but it is understandable; the prioritization of one’s own survival was likely to diminish sympathy for the enemy. Allingham’s reflections, on the other hand, do appear to have been shaped by dominant perceptions: ‘I was very happy to meet my German counterpart. No man who knows war wants war again. I want to forget it. I knew that the Germans didn’t want war any more than we did. The people themselves had no ill feelings towards us. Neither did we to them’. Allingham expresses similar sentiments

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elsewhere in Kitchener’s Last Volunteer. Shortly after the war, while still in uniform, Allingham was posted to Germany, and he speaks favourably of his encounters with the German people: ‘they did all they could for us. In Germany they couldn’t do enough for you’.71 Allingham implies he held this sympathetic attitude at the time, but it may well have been shaped by the intervening years. His empathy for the enemy was certainly easier to express in retrospect, particularly given its alignment with the war’s dominant memory at his time of writing. This was hardly a meeting of equals at the end of the war, and such expressions of commonality overlook a deep-rooted Anglophobia in Germany, which intensified after the effects of the British naval blockade began severely to affect living standards on the German home front.72 We should also question whether Allingham held these beliefs during the war, particularly given Patch’s admission that he felt very little sympathy, and given the prevalence of Germanophobia in Britain during the conflict.73 Finally, it is curious that Allingham reiterates his desire to forget the war when, as discussed, he reflects fondly on it elsewhere. The distorting influence of myth is apparent once more. There is also a sharp contrast between Allingham’s and Patch’s attitudes towards the modern military and its associated pomp and ceremony. Despite having played a role in commemorative practices, Patch questioned the value of Remembrance Day rituals: ‘for me, 11 November is just show business. Take the Armistice Day celebrations . . . it is nothing but a show of military force . . . I don’t think there is any actual remembrance except for those who have lost someone they really cared for . . . The day I lost my pals . . . that’s my remembrance day’.74 Patch alludes here to an apparent contradiction in modern First World War commemoration. Although cultural representations have often espoused myths of horror, futility and victimhood, Armistice Day ceremonies reinforce many of the militaristic values which conflict with the war’s mythology. The events amount to a display of military pride, and are laden with the rhetoric of heroism and sacrifice. Patch also suggests that such practices are inadequate for those who do intend to mourn loss; private acts of remembrance often provide greater comfort. Although Patch’s pacifistic stance reinforced popular narratives, it could also clash with public commemorative rituals. Allingham, however, was far more supportive of the modern military: ‘whenever I go to a military establishment, I always make a point of congratulating servicemen and -women on their choice of profession. If I had my time over again, I  wouldn’t mind having another go’.75 We should remember that Allingham elsewhere emphasizes his desire to forget the war. The inherent contradictions in Allingham’s stance reflect the fact that he was torn between remembering

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his military service with pride on the one hand and submitting to the dominant memory of the First World War on the other. Yet his conflicted stance only reflects in microcosm the mixed messages on the war which have been transmitted in popular culture and the media since the millennium. The responses of critics and the reading public to these autobiographies aptly reflect this dichotomy.

Reception The reception of these books reveals how Patch’s and Allingham’s personal memories intersected with popular attitudes to the war. They also help us to gauge how firmly entrenched the mythology of the conflict was by the twentyfirst century. Many reviews, for example, reduced the war to its familiar symbols. Patch’s disillusionment, encouraged The Times to speak of the ‘terror’ and ‘a century of grim tragedy’,76 whereas brief reviews in the tabloid press similarly fell back upon well-worn signifiers.77 The Daily Express spoke of the ‘horror of the trenches’,78 while the News of the World spoke of ‘unimaginable horrors’.79 Yet other reviews showed a greater sensitivity to recent historical debates concerning the mythology of the war. Peter Parker, who has written more extensively on the war and its commemoration,80 wrote a thorough review of the book for the Daily Telegraph. Parker acknowledged the ‘considerable debate in recent years about the way in which the war is remembered’ and summarized the key features of the myth-shattering, revisionist argument. Parker, however, did little to support the arguments of myth-debunking historians, stressing that issues of wider strategy were largely irrelevant for Patch, whose experience was reduced to ‘wading around in mud and filth with no opportunity to bathe or change your lice ridden clothes’.81 While Parker ultimately reinforces this memory of the war, he correctly suggests that no amount of debunking can detract from the fact that the war was still execrable for many soldiers. Parker’s recognition of mythshattering revisionism, however, demonstrates that the discourse of historical academia had begun to penetrate the mainstream media.82 A piece on Patch in The Observer demonstrated an awareness of the cultural forces which have shaped understandings of Haig, and gave voice to the field-marshal’s eighty-nine-year-old son George Haig:  ‘I’m prepared to give him [Haig] the benefit of the doubt:  he was right to carry on and get to the Passchendaele village . . . It was the right decision because he realised the war had to be won.’83 By quoting a more obviously biased source, rather than a military historian, however, this article perhaps did little to convince its readers of

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the revisionist position. A reviewer in the Independent on Sunday also alluded to the war’s mythology, noting that Patch ‘seems to have a superb memory, so there is no reason to doubt him when he says that he and his comrades never criticised Field-Marshal Haig’.84 This reviewer suggests that the modern view of Haig needs to be revised in the light of Patch’s testimony, but implies many readers would have reason to doubt Patch given the strength of the mythology surrounding the generals of the Great War. Patch’s book therefore had the capacity to challenge existing preconceptions about the war. The lucidity of Patch’s memory, and of course the fact that he was actually there, lent him an authority to revise opinions more successfully than a work of fiction or history. Press reviews of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer also displayed varying levels of awareness regarding the war’s mythology. As with The Last Fighting Tommy, Peter Parker reviewed Allingham’s book for the Daily Telegraph, noting how Allingham ‘has become a kind of Everyman, a representative of millions of ordinary men and women who found themselves caught up in a war that changed the world’.85 Parker was well aware of how the media had employed Allingham as a symbol of the conflict, despite the fact the veteran had not had the ‘typical’ trench experience. The Daily Mail, on the other hand, implied Allingham’s representative nature without the same self-awareness, noting how ‘he went on to see action on land, sea and air with the British Royal Naval Air Service [and] witnessed the horrors of the trenches at Ypres where men fought and died in stinking, rat-infested water up to their knees’.86 This reviewer does not acknowledge the fact that Allingham did not serve in the trenches, and some readers may have inferred that he fought in all these arenas when he did not. It uses his war service here to exploit the symbolism of the ‘trench experience’, demonstrating how varied narratives of the war could be employed to express the same message. Other articles distorted the facts completely. Andy Crick, writing in the Sun in 2009, claimed that Allingham ‘served on the bloody Somme battlefield’.87 This of course was not the case; during his time near the Western Front, Allingham was based near Flanders. Had Crick desired to maintain accuracy while drawing upon the familiar, he could have referred to Ypres, but the Somme perhaps resonates more with the public imagination. Brief articles or reviews in particular, therefore, often reduced Allingham’s war service to easily recognized symbols. Allingham’s proximity to trench warfare prompted allusions to mud and squalor, and these descriptions often took precedence over illustrating how Allingham’s experience differed to that of soldiers like Patch, for example. As Eleanor Bavidge has noted, the media hailed the last veterans as representatives of their

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generation, and, as a consequence, experiences which were ‘too exceptional or singular’ were ‘downplayed and even concealed’ in public discourses.88 Similarly, in this instance, they were misrepresented. Evidently, Allingham’s distinct identity as an RNAS veteran did not accord with the mythology of the trenches. Many reviews on the website Amazon also reflect the dominance of the war’s mythology, and in some cases we can identify an almost verbatim regurgitation of familiar signifiers. One anonymous reviewer of The Last Fighting Tommy noted the ‘mud and blood’ of Passchendaele, before suggesting that the ‘humble tommy’ was treated as ‘nothing more than cannon fodder’. This reviewer alludes to both the horror of the trenches, and the perceived incompetence of the generals. The same reviewer also claims that the ‘book deserves to be a classic and easily sits alongside the accounts of Graves and Sassoon’.89 This appraisal treats the canon of interwar literature as the benchmark against which later representations should be measured. Patch’s account, despite being less self-consciously literary than Graves’s and Sassoon’s, is deemed to be comparable because, like these earlier representations, it confirms popular perceptions of what the war was like. There is a disjunction between reception and authorial intent in the above review of The Last Fighting Tommy. As we have seen, despite confirming many myths of the war, Patch does not describe himself as mere ‘cannon fodder’. Nowhere does he criticize the generals. And yet many other reviews reiterate the myth of inept commanders and futile waste. One recurring word is ‘slaughter’, which not only implies brutality and victimhood, but also fuels notions of incompetent leadership. One reviewer, for example, referred to ‘the slaughter of young men’, before suggesting that ‘wars are still being fought by lions led by donkeys’.90 This allusion to contemporary conflicts illustrates how Patch’s First World War experiences, and the myths associated with his war, could be employed in order to advance comments about more recent wars. As the historian Ross Wilson has demonstrated, the myth of ‘lions led by donkeys’ endures in British society because of its perceived relevance to contemporary debates: those on both the left and the right of the political spectrum have invoked it when indicting the British government’s conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.91 The ‘lost generation’ is another powerful trope echoed in reviews of The Last Fighting Tommy. One reviewer read the book ‘as homage to the tragic modesty of a lost generation’,92 while another noted that Patch’s account ‘of course evoked all the horrors of war combined with the senseless destruction of a generation’.93 Here is an almost perfect précis of First World War mythology: the word ‘horrors’ denotes the perceived barbarity of trench warfare, while the word ‘senseless’

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implies futility and waste in relation to this ‘lost generation’. Evidently many readers approached the book with a pre-existing sense of what the war had been like. This reviewer writes as if the horrors of war are an essential, inevitable component of First World War literature, and to an extent she is right. These expectations dictate the content of these books, and publishers promote them accordingly. Kitchener’s Last Volunteer triggered similar responses, as this reviewer’s summary of the book illustrates: ‘Henry found himself on the Western Front, in the trenches and the absolute horror of that period is brought home by the story of him wandering into an open shell hole one dark night’. Later in the piece, the reviewer once more refers to the ‘unimaginable horror of the trenches’, echoing the exact phrase which the News of the World had used in its aforementioned review.94 The symbol of the trench looms large in this review. Indeed, the myth is so strong that this reviewer misrepresents the content of the book, for, as we have seen, Allingham did not serve in the trenches. Allingham was based on the Western Front, and did wander into a shell hole on one occasion, but to suggest he ‘found himself . . . in the trenches’ is misleading given his role in the RNAS. A more discerning review noted that Allingham’s war experience was ‘not devoid of horror by any means, but quieter than that experienced by some’.95 Yet even this reviewer measures Allingham’s account in terms of horror, and contrasts this with the more terrible experiences which some soldiers experienced. Despite their differences, reviewers frequently saw Patch’s and Allingham’s accounts as mutually reinforcing. One reviewer of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, for example, stated that ‘I would also recommend Harry Patch’s book . . . with equal status. These two fine books should sit alongside each other on every bookshelf across the country to be read time and time again’.96 The Amazon website also encourages this connection, informing browsers that customers who bought one book frequently also bought the other. Another reviewer saw both these texts as fulfilling an educational purpose too, suggesting that ‘books such as this and Harry Patch’s . . . deserve to become part of the National Curriculum’.97 In effect, these reviewers were defining the canon. As we have seen, readers could interpret these texts as inheritors of a literary lineage stretching back to the ‘war books boom’, and their treatment as complementary texts reflects a popular, if not critical, expansion of the canon. The use of Wilfred Owen and books such as Birdsong for educational purposes may also have convinced the above reviewer that Patch’s and Allingham’s accounts can do the same. Yet, as we have seen throughout this book, canonization can elide the contrasts between texts. Despite their similarities, Patch’s and Allingham’s accounts differ greatly, both in the experiences they relate and the opinions they express.

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Readers also had a clear sense of what they felt these books should and should not include. Patch himself often spoke of being tired of talking about the war, and preferred to tell his life story. He resisted being commoditized as a symbol of the First World War, and as such Van Emden places Patch’s war service chronologically within the narrative of his entire life. The First World War is inevitably the largest portion of the book, and the central pivot around which the rest of the narrative hinges, but Van Emden pays due attention to Patch’s childhood experiences, his life as a plumber after the war, and his recent rise to celebrity status. Despite Van Emden’s infrequent intrusions into the narrative, the book largely remains faithful to the conventions of a traditional autobiography. Allingham’s account is similar in this respect, although Goodwin’s interventions are longer and more frequent. This irritated one reviewer, for example, who felt that such passages ‘spoilt the sequence of Henry’s memoirs and felt more like a history lesson’.98 Many reviewers of The Last Fighting Tommy, on the other hand, anticipated a more thorough account of the war. One complained that ‘you get very little sense of what it was like to live and fight through this period of British history, other than a few anecdotes and terse descriptions’.99 Another was disappointed that most of the book was ‘a rambling history of his life’, and warned that ‘if you buy it for an insight into the First World War you will be sorely disappointed’.100 Perhaps the most critical review expressed similar dissatisfaction: ‘the book skips over WW1 in a few brief pages – arguably . . . the sole reason the book exists, so one would think a more detailed account is appropriate . . . I can only interpret the book’s cover as cheap marketing tricks.’101 Such reviews overlook the fact that Patch and Van Emden are attempting to piece together, primarily from Patch’s memory, an experience of only a few months which took place ninety years before the publication of the book. This reviewer’s chagrin is nevertheless understandable: the First World War recollections are clearly the book’s major selling point, yet they account for less than a third of the text. The fact that some reviewers expected the book to provide a more complete historical picture lends weight to the concerns of historians who fear that literary accounts and personal memoirs take precedence over academic history in the formation of popular perceptions of the war.102 It is perhaps partly due to readers of autobiography and fiction conflating individual narratives with a supposed ‘truth’ of war experience that certain myths arise. But we should not only blame the reader. As the reviewer above suggests, the marketing of the book encourages this misinterpretation: popular booksellers file the book under ‘history’ alongside more rigorous academic accounts.103 Libraries also tend to place the book in the ‘history’, as opposed to the ‘biography’ section.104 Regardless of

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how satisfactory people found the book, many reviewers read the account as history and this helps to explain why readers assume certain myths to be typical and ‘true’. Both expectations and promotion therefore played a role in the enhancement of certain myths. Although reviews often rehearse myths of futility, waste and horror, reader responses reveal that attitudes to the Great War since the millennium have been more complex than we might first assume. Although some of the canonical literature of the interwar years eroded values of duty and sacrifice, and although recent narratives of futility seem to represent the apotheosis of this trend, more traditional values still held currency in the early twenty-first century. Eleanor Bavidge, for example, has argued that ‘cultural representations of the soldier . . . are marked by myths of heroism, sacrifice, courage and brotherhood’.105 These notions appear to have withstood the articulation of more pacifistic narratives, and reflect what some commentators have termed the ‘cult of the military’. This trend, particularly evident in the United States, but also increasingly apparent in Britain, is characterized by unconditional support for servicemen. In the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the public and the media often praise soldiers for their heroism and sacrifices, regardless of the contentious rationales for the conflicts in which they are fighting.106 These attitudes towards the military often framed perceptions of the First World War shortly after the millennium. Many reviews of the two texts attached some value to the experience, conduct and outcome of the conflict. Referring to Patch, one reviewer argued that ‘this man like so many others did his duty so we were able to keep our freedom. These boys were fighting for more than their own lives’.107 This reviewer does not portray the war as a futile waste. Britain fought the war in the name of freedom, and rather than being mere lambs to the slaughter, these men were perceived to have made a meaningful sacrifice, from which we benefit today. This view of course conflicts with narratives of the war which deem it futile when compared to the Second World War, but it is not so different from those of Cyril Falls or Douglas Jerrold, who criticized the disillusionment literature of the ‘war books boom’. According to these readers, the war may have been horrific, but it was not fought in vain. Other reviews echo these sentiments. One reader wrote that Patch ‘represents the stoicism, courage and sacrifice of a generation’,108 while another spoke of ‘supreme sacrifice’ and ‘selfless acts so that we may live in freedom today’.109 Likewise, a review of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer stressed that ‘we must never forget what his generation did for us’.110 Again, these readers bestow the war with value and meaning; there is no sense of waste or futility here. Sacrifice in

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particular is a significant word, which implies not mindless slaughter but meaningful death in service of a higher cause. Another reviewer of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer preferred Allingham’s account to Patch’s, noting the latter’s disillusionment:  ‘Henry’s positive outlook on life and his basic optimism about human nature come through clearly here, as opposed to the somewhat bitter undercurrent in Harry Patch’s book’.111 Other reviewers appear to have overlooked Patch’s bitterness. Despite his antipathy to the war, and his refusal to find any meaning in it himself, readers still found the recollection of his experiences as symbolic of a worthwhile struggle for freedom. The press also employed idealistic rhetoric when discussing these veterans. A  Mail on Sunday Remembrance Day article on the last veterans in 2007 urged its readers to ‘thank them before it’s too late’, while the Daily Mail expressed their approval for Allingham’s work, noting how ‘Prince Charles has contributed a moving preface to this book . . . reminding us that we should never forget the sacrifices made on our behalf. Indeed we should not’.112 As with some of the Amazon reviews, this article expresses a sense of indebtedness to Allingham’s generation, and makes reference to ‘sacrifice’. Such notions run contrary to the myth of a futile war, and suggest that the endeavours of these men made a necessary and lasting contribution. Nor did the media consistently portray these veterans as victims either: reporting on Patch’s death, the Sun described him as ‘Britain’s Last Trench Hero’.113 Richard Aldington may have used the term ironically in 1929, but we should not doubt the sincerity of its use in this instance. A linear model for charting the progression of an ironic or futile war myth is clearly inadequate, therefore. Of course, Patch did not see himself as a hero; he emphasized consistently in his autobiography and elsewhere that he had no desire to fight. But as has been suggested, the press and the public often misinterpreted or deliberately overlooked biographical details in order to reinforce their own views on the war. It should be noted that such proclamations of national pride with regard to the First World War are more prominent in the tabloid press, which has also unwaveringly supported Britain’s involvement in more recent conflicts. Broadsheet newspapers appear to have avoided expressing similar sentiments.

Conclusion Veteran testimonies in the early twenty-first century were not impervious to the influence of the war’s mythology; these accounts were entangled within popular discourses of the First World War, and in turn reinforced many

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myths of the conflict. What Patch and Allingham chose to remember, how they remembered it and how they recalled it were shaped by the intervening years. The collaborative construction of these books, as we have seen, also opened up these veterans’ memories to distortion, while the publishing industry inevitably sought to promote these books with recourse to familiar symbols. But Patch’s and Allingham’s memories did not always align with popular narratives, and this chapter has identified areas of resistance where these veterans counter popular myths. The critical and popular reception of these autobiographies also suggests a varied and inconsistent engagement with the war’s mythology. While popular narratives conditioned many responses, certain aspects of the mythology, particularly the notion of futility, did not go unchallenged. Whereas some readers dismissed the war as a pointless waste, others interpreted it in terms of heroism, sacrifice and a struggle for freedom. The co-existence of these protean perspectives demonstrates that the supposedly hegemonic mythology identified by historians has been less pervasive than suggested.

Conclusion

For a century literature has been intrinsically bound to popular understandings of the First World War in Britain. Various collective memories of the war have coexisted over the course of the last hundred years, but a dominant narrative, or mythology, of the conflict has also emerged during this period. This mythology – centred on horror, futility and disillusionment – can be traced back to works written during the conflict itself, but its foundations were largely constructed during the interwar years. Still fresh in the memory, the Great War was a mainstay of British culture during the 1920s in particular. Writers and readers reflected on and evaluated the conflict, seeking to understand why it was fought and what it had meant. For these reasons, the literary response to the Great War is often explained in psychological or ideological terms. Scholars have frequently sought to determine why writers responded in a particular way to the war at particular times. Despite the importance of these considerations, we also need to view memories of the First World War as a product of the commercial forces of publication and reception. For these reasons, this book has paid attention to the hitherto unexplored role of publishing houses in constructing narratives of the war, identifying the various literary, ideological and commercial drivers which underpinned their commissioning and marketing decisions. Viewed from this perspective, the relationship between literature and the mythology of the war is thrown into even sharper relief. While publishers first approached the war with trepidation, they gradually promoted an increasingly disenchanted narrative of the conflict. Initially this was the response of particularly enterprising firms driven by an ideological commitment to challenge more traditional, moralistic narratives of the conflict. With the popular success of All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929, however, disillusionment soon offered a way of making money. Realizing that horror and

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futility could sell books, many other publishing houses followed suit. Through a variety of marketing methods, publishers further reinforced the war’s mythology. But commercial considerations also prevented this memory of the war from becoming dominant. To appreciate why this was the case, we need to understand how readers responded to books. Scholars have paid limited attention to the reception of war literature during the interwar years, but exploring this neglected area underscores just how fractured perceptions of the war were at this stage. The meaning and nature of the war remained fiercely contested issues, not only among critics, but also within veteran communities and the wider public. Competing collective memories coexisted. While some readers welcomed the disillusioned texts of the ‘war books boom’, others dismissed them. Fundamental values were often at stake, with notions of nationhood and masculine identity at the heart of these disputes. The growing opposition to disenchanted books also had a commercial dimension, however. As the market became saturated, many readers began to tire of this literature, and publishers sought to differentiate their products. Negotiating this divided marketplace could prove challenging for authors and publishers, as the reception of Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero illustrates. But it also had significant implications for the memory of the war. Scholars have too frequently imposed a linear narrative when explaining the development of the war’s mythology, suggesting that a multiplicity of perspectives on the conflict gradually narrowed to a coherent fixed discourse. Yet while disenchantment did begin to usurp more traditional narratives, the commercial importance of product differentiation ensured that publishers promoted a diversity of perspectives during the interwar years. One such example was Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, which helped to expand the masculine-oriented narrative of the war. Its enormous success, shortly after the ‘war books boom’ had abated, demonstrates that the public was still amenable to a presentation of the war which drew on a number of its key myths. Again the publishing industry was integral, with the commercial zeal of Victor Gollancz crucial in ensuring the book’s success. As the 1930s progressed, the myths which had been articulated during the ‘war books boom’ retained their appeal. Fears of a future war and growing pacifist sentiments ensured their survival. Younger generations, too, discovered this literature, while the poetry of Wilfred Owen steadily grew in reputation. Contrary to what many historians have asserted, Owen was already considered to be one of the major literary voices of the war by this stage. By 1939, literature had played a crucial role in constructing a template for how the war would be remembered over the succeeding decades. The British

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public generally agreed that the war had been a horrific experience. It could no longer be dressed up in euphemistic, chivalric terms. But readers still debated the extent and frequency of this horror. Writers like Remarque and Aldington had expounded notions of horror and futility, but this viewpoint had been far from cemented. Many of the supposed ‘anti-war’ books of the boom did not denounce the entire meaning of the war, and those which did were heavily critiqued. The perception of incompetent generalship was also not widespread at this stage. Although literary works did provide critiques of higher command, these rarely amounted to a sustained attack on the entire military conduct of the war. The myth of the ‘lost generation’, however, had begun to gain traction, with Testament of Youth in particular helping to perpetuate this narrative. The Second World War provoked a reconsideration of the previous conflict. Few scholars have analysed the 1940s from this perspective, but it was an important decade in shaping popular understandings of the Great War. Although interest in the First World War declined as the new war progressed, its literature was read and reviewed in the light of renewed hostilities with Germany. Critics further enhanced the reputation of Wilfred Owen. New reflections on the previous war, penned in the light of the second, also reveal how myths were created, reinforced or challenged as a result of the new conflict. Again, the mythology of the war did not necessarily develop in a linear fashion, at least not in the minds of all those who reflected on it. While for some the new war heightened the tragedy, horror and futility of the first, not least because it evidently had not been the war to end all wars, for others the First World War assumed a new significance. I have also problematized this supposed linearity in Chapter 5. The rewriting and republishing of Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That did not perfectly preempt the enhancement of the First World War’s mythology during the 1960s. Rather, many of Graves’s amendments resisted these developments. When in the hands of younger generations with no experience of the war, however, literature was often employed to drive home narratives of horror and futility. The publishing industry was again crucial, with poetry anthologies in particular reinforcing this perspective. The poetry of Wilfred Owen also experienced a significant rise in stature: his poems became lieux de mémoire – literary sites which distilled and transmitted the mythology of the war. This was not a sudden, unexpected rise to fame, but rather the apotheosis of a gradual process underway since the interwar years. Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth also achieved a symbolic position in the latter half of the twentieth century, largely due to the efforts of the feminist publishing house Virago. The book’s renewed success solidified the myth of the

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‘lost generation’ and its attendant grief, while a narrative of female emancipation gained further traction. Cinema and television were of course more pervasive forms of cultural media in the latter half of the twentieth century. The viewing figures for The Great War television series, for example, eclipsed the sales of most war books. Yet literature remained central to the popular perception of the war. The education system, for example, ensured war poetry rea.ched younger generations, while millions watched the television adaptation of Testament of Youth. Similarly, the successful television series Blackadder Goes Forth, which first aired in 1989, drew heavily on the tropes established by literature during the interwar years. The broad dissemination of the war’s mythology since the 1960s has encouraged many historians to argue that a disenchanted, anti-war narrative had been fixed by the millennium. In Chapter 6, I demonstrated that this was far from the case. While the war’s mythology undoubtedly exerted a powerful influence in the first decade of the twenty-first century, popular responses to the last veterans reveal the variety of interpretations that still coexisted. Throughout this book I  have spoken of a ‘mythology’ of the First World War, a coherent body of multiple, complementary myths which have developed over the last hundred years. We should note, however, that these myths are not mutually dependent on one another. Believing a generation was lost in the war does not necessarily entail the belief that the war was futile, for example. At various points throughout the last century, publishers, readers and writers have often subscribed to certain elements of the mythology while rejecting others. Although many of these myths are now powerful and pervasive, they are not hegemonic, and never have been. They have been consistently contested, and this remains the case today.

The future of First World War memory Following the deaths of Harry Patch and Henry Allingham in July 2009, other survivors with claims to ‘last veteran’ status also passed away. Claude Choules, who had served in the Royal Navy from 1917, died in May 2011. Despite not being involved in any major battles, his experiences serving aboard the HMS Revenge made him the last known combat veteran of the First World War. The ‘last veteran’, if defined as someone who had served in the military, however, did not need to have experienced combat. Nor, in fact, did this last veteran have to be a man.1 It was in fact a woman, Florence Green, whom the media eventually

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recognized as the world’s last remaining First World War veteran. Green had joined the Women’s Royal Air Force as a waitress in September 1918, and died in February 2012. If we are to acknowledge the multifaceted nature of war experience, however, we must also recognize that it is not just veterans who were affected by the war. There remain a handful of centenarians in Britain who may well possess childhood memories of the conflict.2 Yet it is clear that the Great War has almost entirely passed out of living memory, with direct links to 1914– 1918 all but severed. What Jan Assmann has termed ‘communicative memory’ – the direct transmission of living memories between generations – will soon be extinguished. What, then, will be the implications of this development for how the First World War is remembered in the future? Family history may play an increasingly important role. In the absence of living memories, people will need to conduct historical research in order to uncover their ancestors’ experiences during the Great War. Family history has grown in popularity since the 1990s, aided by the development of the internet and the digitization of records, and it has become a major method through which people engage with the war’s memory.3 Families, too, may become more significant in transmitting memories. Marianne Hirsch has developed the concept of ‘postmemory’ to describe ‘the relationship that the “generation after” bear to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before’. Hirsch demonstrates how the direct descendants of Holocaust survivors, through the stories they were told and the images they were exposed to growing up, carry the memories of these traumatic events without having been directly exposed to them.4 It should be stressed that Hirsh applies this theory specifically to the traumatic legacy of the Holocaust; memories of the First World War may not have reverberated quite so emphatically within families. It has been suggested that veterans were perhaps more likely to share stories with their grandchildren than with their children.5 Many descendants, however, can recall stories they were told by their parents, and these descendants will have a part to play in First World War remembrance, at least until this ‘generation after’ itself dies out. During the BBC’s coverage of the hundredth anniversary of 1 July 1916, for instance, direct descendants – in lieu of veterans – participated in the commemorative events.6 What Jan Assmann has defined as cultural memory will also take on an even greater importance. With no veterans alive to communicate their war experiences, public perceptions of the war will be increasingly shaped by cultural products and commemorative practices. The canon of First World War literature will therefore surely retain its position at the heart of the conflict’s popular memory. New works of literature and indeed film and television will continue to

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influence popular understandings of the war. The enduring popularity of First World War themes across a variety of media attests to this. In 2007, for example, Michael Morpurgo’s children’s novel War Horse (1982) was adapted for stage, winning numerous awards and achieving international success. In 2011 Stephen Spielberg’s film adaptation was also a critical and commercial triumph. The centenary has also stimulated cultural production in this area, with literature a major source of inspiration. The BBC adapted both Birdsong and Parade’s End for television in 2012, and a film adaptation of Testament of Youth was released in 2014. Surveying this wave of commemorative activity will require a detailed study in its own right in the years after 2018, at which point it may be possible to gauge the impact of the centenary on the war’s mythology. Without the nuances of personal memory, however, it seems likely that a narrative of futile slaughter will continue to influence public understandings. New cultural representations will depend on an existing stock of narratives, the most prominent and accessible of which are, by definition, canonical. The construction of the canon, as we have seen throughout this book, has been central to the emergence of the war’s mythology. And yet, as we have seen, competing narratives have not been extinguished. The efforts of military historians to debunk the mythology of the war, moreover, do not appear to have been in vain. In early 2014, with the centenary of the war fast approaching, public debates over the war’s meaning demonstrated that not all commentators had come to see the war as a futile endeavour.7 Some commentators even attempted to remould the war as a patriotic triumph.8 Some counter-narratives, however, risk polarizing debate. If this happens, nuance will be lost, and we will fail to appreciate the historical complexity of the First World War. Debunking a myth, or questioning its validity, does not mean that we have to subscribe to an antithetical viewpoint. We can accept, for example, that the First World War may not have been fought entirely in vain without recasting it with pride as a victory for liberal democracy. We can accept that Wilfred Owen did not represent the views of every soldier in the trenches, without denying that he still had something profound to say about the brutality and degradation of trench warfare. Crediting Haig for some of his achievements does not mean that we have to laud him as a war hero. Perhaps a more important concern for historians should be the fact that, rather than having a coherent but distorted view of the First World War, many people in Britain know very little about it at all. A  survey carried out in Britain shortly before the centenary revealed limited knowledge of the war among the British public, and particularly among younger generations: thirty-one per cent of eighteen- to

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twenty-four-year-olds, for instance, could not name Germany as one of Britain’s enemies.9 Regardless, the memory of the war is unlikely to remain static. The meaning of the First World War has been consistently debated over the last hundred years, and this trend seems set to intensify as the centenary progresses. Many of the fierce debates which characterized the ‘war books boom’ are as relevant today as they have ever been, not least because a new First World War publishing boom is underway. In addition to new works of fiction,10 the centenary has triggered the publication of numerous academic works on the First World War, a testament to the commercial viability of First World War history and the vibrancy of this scholarly field.11 This book itself is of course a product of this boom. With writers, publishers and readers – albeit in an increasingly digital context – set to play a prominent role in determining how the memory of the war continues to develop over the course of the centenary and beyond, it is important that we pay attention to how these agents have shaped the memory of the war over the last hundred years. There never has been, and never will be, a single ‘truth’ about the war, but recognizing these forces within the book market will at least help us to gain a greater understanding of the war’s enduring cultural legacy.

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Notes Introduction 1 See, for example, Dan Todman, The Great War: Myth and Memory (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), xi–xii; Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory: The First World War – Myths and Realities (London: Review, 2002), 3; and Brian Bond, The Unquiet Western Front: Britain’s Role in Literature and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1–26. 2 Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (London: Pimlico, 1992), ix. 3 The phrase ‘lions led by donkeys’ was popularized by Alan Clark in his scathing critique of British generalship, The Donkeys (London: Hutchinson, 1961). 4 Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 3. 5 Bond, The Unquiet Western Front, 75. 6 Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front (London: Harper Perennial, 2005), xvii. 7 David Reynolds, The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century (London: Simon & Schuster, 2013), xv. 8 See, for example, John Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire – The Myths and Antimyths of War, 1861–1945 (London: Leo Cooper, 1992), 225; Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 49; Bond, The Unquiet Western Front, 1; Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 294; and Max Hastings, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 (London: William Collins, 2013), 563. 9 See, for example, John Terraine, Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier (London: Hutchinson, 1963), xviii and Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army (London: Aurum, 2011). Terraine and Sheffield, have, to varying degrees, sought to rehabilitate the reputation of the much-maligned Douglas Haig, although the general’s record remains contentious among military historians. 10 Todman, The Great War, 44–45. 11 See, for example, Corelli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1984), 433; Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 9. 12 Ian F. W. Beckett, The Great War 1914–1918 (Harlow : Pearson, 2007), 440. 13 Martin Stephen, The Price of Pity: Poetry, History and Myth in the Great War (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), 3–7.

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14 Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (1965; 2nd edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), 52. 15 Gerard De Groot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (Harlow : Longman, 1996), 291. 16 Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5. 17 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 35. 18 Gail Braybon, introduction to Evidence, History and the Great War (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), 2. For another critique of Fussell’s approach, see Todman, The Great War, 158–160. 19 Hynes, A War Imagined, xi. 20 Janet Watson, Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 187. 21 Toby Thacker, British Culture and the First World War: Experience, Representation and Memory (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 22 Rosa Maria Bracco, The Merchants of Hope: British Middlebrow Writers and the First World War (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 205; Hugh Cecil, The Flower of Battle: British Fiction Writers of the First World War (London: Secker and Warburg, 1995), 5. 23 Jane Potter, Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women’s Literary Responses to the Great War 1914–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Angela K. Smith, The Second Battlefield: Women, Modernism and the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). Potter focuses on popular literature written by women during the war years, while Smith examines the relationship between women’s war writing and modernist literature. 24 Ann-Marie Einhaus, The Short Story and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2. 25 Hynes, A War Imagined, xi. 26 See Todman, The Great War, 219. For other discussions of how the memory of the war developed beyond the interwar years, see Reynolds, The Long Shadow and Bond, The Unquiet Western Front. 27 Janet Watson, Fighting Different Wars; Andrew Frayn, Writing Disenchantment: British First World War Prose, 1914–1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). 28 For an analysis of the British publishing industry’s role in promoting war memoirs during the interwar years, see Ian Isherwood, ‘The British Publishing Industry and Commercial Memories of the First World War’, War in History 23/3 (2016), 323–340. For a variety of perspectives on the British publishing industry during the war, see Mary Hammond and Shafquat Towheed (eds), Publishing in the First Word War: Essays in Book History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007). For a discussion of the publishing of short stories about the war, see Einhaus, The Short Story and the First World War.

Notes

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29 Peter Widdowson, Literature (London: Routledge, 1999), 15, 101. 30 Stephen A. Shapiro, ‘The Dark Continent of Literature: Autobiography’, Comparative Literature Studies 5/4 (1968), 425. 31 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 40. 32 Trudi Tate, Modernism, History and the First World War (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1998), 3; Smith, The Second Battlefield, 119. 33 Don McKenzie, ‘ “What’s Past Is Prologue”: The Bibliographic Society and History of the Book’, in Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays, ed. Peter McDonald and Michael F. Suarez (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 268. 34 Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, tr. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1–12. Genette uses the term ‘peritext’ to describe the paratexts contained within the book itself, and ‘epitext’ to describe the paratexts external to the book. 35 Roger Chartier, ‘Texts, Printings, Readings’, in Lyn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (London: University of California Press), 156. 36 Robert Darnton, ‘What Is the History of Books? ’, in David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (eds), The Book History Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), 21. 37 Jonathan Rose, ‘Rereading the English Common Reader: A Preface to a History of Audiences’, in Finkelstein and McCleery (eds), The Book History Reader, 324. 38 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, tr. Lewis A. Coser (London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 38, 173, 40. 39 Jan Assmann, ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, in Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (eds), Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 111, 117. 40 Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations 26 (Spring 1989), 12. 41 Aleida Assmann, ‘Canon and Archive’, in Erll and Nünning (eds), Cultural Memory Studies, 101, 103, 104. 42 Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, ‘Setting the Framework’, in War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 6–9. 43 Wulf Kansteiner, ‘Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies’, History and Theory 41/2 (2002), 192. 44 Alon Confino, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method’, The American Historical Review 102/5 (1997), 1392. 45 Noah Gedi and Yigal Elam, ‘Collective Memory – What Is It? History and Memory 8/1 (1996), 34.

210

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46 Samuel Hynes, ‘Personal Narratives and Commemoration’, in Winter and Sivan (eds), War and Remembrance, 206–207. 47 Samuel Hynes, The Soldier’s Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War (London: Pimlico, 1998), xiii. 48 Winter, Sites of Memory, 128–129. 49 Steven Trout, On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance, 1919–1941 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010), 15.

1 Publishing the First World War, 1919–1930 1 2 3 4

5

6

7 8

9

10 11

Jacob Omnium, ‘Under Cover’, The Bookseller, April 1919, 50. Hynes, A War Imagined, 423, 425. Jacob Omnium, ‘Under Cover’, The Bookseller, May 1919, 221. Between 1921 and 1927 The Bookseller was incorporated with the Stationery Trades Journal, and in 1927 it moved from being a monthly to a weekly publication. Between 1928 and 1933 editorial control was handed over to a joint committee of the Associated Booksellers and the Publishing Association. During this period the publication was renamed The Publisher and Bookseller. For more information, see Nicholas Clee, ‘The Whittaker Years’, The Bookseller, 20 June 2008, 34–35. For an analysis of the British publishing industry during the war, see Jane Potter, ‘For Country, Conscience and Commerce: Publishers and Publishing, 1914–1918’, in Hammond and Towheed, Publishing in the First World War, 11–26. Ian Isherwood has shown that a large number of memoirs in particular continued to be published shortly after the war, The British Publishing Industry and Commercial Memories of the First World War, 331. Not all of these books necessarily sold in large numbers, however, and this glut of titles no doubt provoked The Bookseller’s reaction against the trend. George Jefferson, Edward Garnett: A Life in Literature (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982), 192. See Tanya Harrod, ‘Read, Sir Herbert Edward (1893–1968)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter ODNB) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/35695, accessed 30 August 2016. Paul Edwards, ‘British War Memoirs’, in Vincent Sherry (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 15. The Hogarth Press eventually published Read’s war memoir in 1925, under the title In Retreat. John Feather, A History of British Publishing (London: Routledge, 1988), 194. Bracco, The Merchants of Hope, 10.

Notes

211

12 Examples of these include Longman, John Murray, Collins, A & C Black and Thomas Nelson. For an overview of these publishing dynasties, see Ian Norrie, Mumby’s Publishing and Bookselling in the Twentieth Century (6th edn, London: Bell & Hyman, 1982), 28–39. The discussion of various publishing houses that follows is by no means intended to be comprehensive, and rather provides an introduction to a selection of the significant publishing houses considered later in this chapter. 13 Charles Morgan, The House of Macmillan (1843–1943) (London: Macmillan, 1944), 229. 14 See James G. Nelson, ‘Bodley Head’, in Jonathan Rose and Patricia J. Anderson (eds), British Literary Publishing Houses, 1881–1965 (hereafter BLPH) (London: Gale Research, 1991), 40–44. 15 See Dennis Griffiths, ‘Methuen and Company’, BLPH, 211–220. 16 See Geraldine Beare, ‘Gerald Duckworth and Company Limited’, BLPH, 103–107. 17 Norrie, Mumby’s Publishing and Bookselling in the Twentieth Century, 48. 18 See J. A. Edwards, ‘George Allen and Unwin Limited’, BLPH, 3–11. 19 Stanley Unwin, The Truth about Publishing (1926; 3rd edn, London: Allen & Unwin, 1929), 341. 20 See Chapter 3 for a detailed discussion of Gollancz’s marketing strategy for Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth. For the history of Victor Gollancz Ltd., see Beverley Schneller, ‘Victor Gollancz Limited’, BLPH, 126–132. 21 Rupert Hart-Davis, ‘Cape, (Herbert) Jonathan (1879–1960)’, rev. Jonathan Rose, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/32282, accessed 22 August 2016. 22 Michael S. Howard, Jonathan Cape, Publisher (London: Penguin, 1977), ix. 23 See Jonathan Rose, ‘Jonathan Cape Limited’, BLPH, 50–65. 24 See J. O. Baylen, ‘Faber and Faber Limited’, BLPH, 114–118. 25 Charles Monteith, ‘Faber, Sir Geoffrey Cust (1889–1961)’, rev. Clare L. Taylor, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/33061, accessed 22 August 2016. 26 For the history of Martin Secker, see Dorothy W. Collins, ‘Martin Secker’, BLPH, 288–292. For Peter Davies Ltd., see Jonathan Rose, ‘Peter Davies Limited’, BLPH, 79–80. 27 W. G. Taylor, ‘Publishing’, in John Hampden (ed.), The Book World (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1935), 54. 28 Linda Marie Fritschner, ‘Publishers’ Readers, Publishers, and Their Authors’, Publishing History 7 (1980), 93, 80. 29 Taylor, ‘Publishing’, 76. 30 Frank Swinnerton, Authors and the Book Trade (1932; 2nd edn, London: Hutchinson, 1935), 23, 75, 29–31.

21

212

Notes

31 Taylor, ‘Publishing’, 55. For a discussion of royalties, see John Feather, A History of British Publishing (London: Routledge, 2006), 138; and Victor BonhamCarter, Authors by Profession: From the Copyright Act 1911 until the End of 1981 (London: Bodley Head and the Society of Authors, 1984), 37. 32 Taylor, ‘Publishing’, 57–58. 33 For a detailed discussion of the role of the literary agent, see Mary Ann Gillies, The Professional Literary Agent in Britain, 1880–1920 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 34 Swinnerton, Authors and the Book Trade, 58. 35 Unwin, The Truth about Publishing, 243. 36 One of the first publishers to use pictorial jackets was T. Fisher Unwin, who by 1896 was adorning book jackets with simple illustrations. In the first few years of the twentieth century other publishers began to follow suit. See Charles Rosner, The Growth of the Book Jacket (London: Sylvan Press, 1956). 37 See, for example, the dust jackets for Joseph Hocking, Tommy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916) and Sapper, Men, Women and Guns (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916). 38 Unwin, The Truth about Publishing, 166. 39 Richard de la Mare, A Publisher on Book Production (London: J. M. Dent, 1936), 41. 40 Joseph McAleer, Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain, 1914–1950 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 42. 41 Taylor, ‘Publishing’, 66–71. 42 Unwin, The Truth about Publishing, 262–263. 43 Swinnerton, Authors and the Book Trade, 80, 83. 44 Unwin, The Truth about Publishing, 263. 45 Taylor, ‘Publishing’, 67. 46 Swinnerton, Authors and the Book Trade, 119. 47 Taylor, ‘Publishing’, 65–66. 48 Unwin, The Truth about Publishing, 245, 247. 49 McAleer, Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain, 42, 7. 50 Martin Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’: A Social History of Britain between the Wars (London: Bodley Head, 2008), 328. 51 Jonathan Rose, ‘Modernity and Print I: Britain 1890–1970’, in Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (eds), A Companion to the History of the Book (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 345. 52 Nicola Wilson, ‘Libraries, Reading Patterns and Censorship’ in Patrick Parrinder and Andrzej Gasiorek (eds), The Oxford History of the Novel in English, IV: The Reinvention of the British and Irish Novel 1880–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 37. 53 Ibid., 39.

Notes 54 55 56 57

58 59 60

61

62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74

213

McAleer, Popular Reading and Publishing, 49. Swinnerton, Authors and the Book Trade, 70–74. Unwin, The Truth about Publishing, 331. See Stanley Unwin, The Truth about Publishing (1926; 8th edn, London: Allen & Unwin, 1976), 220. Stanley’s nephew Philip Unwin quotes this figure in this revised and edited version of his uncle’s book. Michael Paris, Warrior Nation – Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850– 2000 (London: Reaktion, 2000), 148. Bracco, The Merchants of Hope, 71. The dust jacket for a later edition states this sales figure on its front cover. The exact date of this edition is not given, but the advertisements for other books on the back cover suggest that it was published around 1931 at the earliest. See R. J. Minney, ‘Frankau, Gilbert (1884–1952)’, rev. Clare L. Taylor, ODNB, http:// www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/33243, accessed 14 February 2017. Although he does not discuss his military experiences in great detail, Frankau recalls his upbringing and literary career in his memoir Self Portrait: A Novel of His Own Life (London: Hutchinson, 1940). Cecil, The Flower of Battle, 202–206. Gilbert Frankau, Peter Jackson: Cigar Merchant (London: Hutchinson, 1920), 296, 80–81, 98. Examples of popular, patriotic books published during the war include Ian Hay’s The First Hundred Thousand (1915), and the adventure stories of Sapper. For an overview of wartime literary responses, and the war’s impact on popular culture more generally, see George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 160–185. Gilbert Frankau, Self Portrait, 221. James Wald, ‘Periodicals and Periodicity’, in Eliot and Rose (eds), A Companion to the History of the Book, 426. George Simmers, ‘Gilbert Frankau’, http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2007/02/ 08/gilbert-frankau/, accessed 24 September 2013. Punch, 25 February 1920, 159. The Times, 30 January 1920, 14. For a discussion of the novel, see Bracco, Merchants of Hope, 66–67; and Frayn, ‘Writing Disenchantment’, 53–55. Cited in Ernest Raymond, The Story of My Days: An Autobiography 1888–1922 (London: Cassell, 1968), 186. I have been unable to locate a detailed breakdown of the book’s sales figures. This figure is stated in the February 1928 impression of the book. Bracco, Merchants of Hope, 29. The Times, 30 May 1919, 15.

214

214

Notes

75 Reginald Pound, A. P. Herbert: A Biography (London: Michael Joseph, 1976), 65. 76 Bracco, Merchants of Hope, 28–29. 77 Kirsten MacLeod, ‘What People Really Read in 1922: If Winter Comes, the Bestseller in the Annus Mirabilis of Modernism’, in Kate Macdonald and Christoph Singer (eds), Transitions in Middlebrow Writing, 1880–1930 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 15, 17. 78 Jessica Meyer, ‘The Tuition of Manhood: Sapper’s War Stories and the Literature of the War’, in Hammond and Towheed (eds), Publishing in the First Word War, 113. ‘Sapper’ was the pen name of the war veteran H. C. McNeile. 79 ‘Notice of Books’, The Bookseller and Stationery Trades Journal, November 1922, 115. 80 Frayn, Writing Disenchantment, 104–105, 193. 81 ‘Notice of Books’, The Bookseller and Stationery Trades Journal, May 1924, 131. McKenna’s novel narrates life after the armistice, and reflects pessimistically on the value of the conflict. See Stephen McKenna, To-morrow and To-morrow (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1924). 82 Wilfred Owen, Poems, ed. Siegfried Sassoon (London: Chatto & Windus, 1920). Despite Sassoon being credited as the collection’s sole editor, much of the work for the edition was actually carried out by the poet Edith Sitwell. 83 Keith Grieves, ‘C. E. Montague and the Making of Disenchantment’, War in History 4/1 (1997), 55. 84 Dust jacket blurb to R. H. Mottram, The Crime at Vanderlynden’s (London: Chatto & Windus, 1926), British Library Dust Jackets Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum (hereafter BL), AAD/1995/8/01/089. 85 Dust jacket blurb to Ford Madox Ford, A Man Could Stand Up – (London: Duckworth, 1926), BL, AAD/1995/8/01/181. 86 ‘War Stories Again’, The Bookseller, September 1926, 34. This article erroneously describes Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant as a wartime book, despite its 1919 publication. 87 Geoffrey Faber, A Publisher Speaking (London: Faber, 1934), 24. 88 See Arnold Zweig, The Case of Sergeant Grischa, tr. Eric Sutton (London: Martin Secker, 1928). 89 George Salamon, Arnold Zweig (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1975), 80. 90 Publisher and Bookseller, 1 February 1929, 148. 91 Max Egremont, Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography (London: Picador, 2005), 331, 338. 92 Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon: The Journey from the Trenches: A Biography, 1918–1967 (London: Duckworth, 2003), 457. 93 Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 256. 94 Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, 429. 95 Publisher and Bookseller, 23 November 1928, 1037. It is worth noting that CobdenSanderson was a small coterie printing press, and its print runs would not have

Notes

96 97 98 99 100 101 102

103

104 105 106

107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

215

been very large. Although it was clearly popular, the multiple print runs for Blunden’s work may not therefore be indicative of huge demand. Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, 429. Bracco, Merchants of Hope, 145. See, for example, the blurb to R. C. Sherriff, Journey’s End (1929; repr., London: Penguin, 2000). Penguin described the play as an ‘anti-war classic’. Bracco, Merchants of Hope, 145. Modris Eksteins, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front and the Fate of the War’, Journal of Contemporary History 15/2 (1980), 353. Bracco, Merchants of Hope, 145. This figure is stated in the July 1929 impression, which lists the fifteen printings of the book since its publication. See Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, tr. A. W. Wheen (London: Putnam, 1929), 4. James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, ‘G. P. Putnam’s Sons’, in Patricia J. Anderson and Jonathan Rose (eds), British Literary Publishing Houses 1820–1880 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1991), 254–255. Norrie, Mumby’s Publishing and Bookselling in the Twentieth Century, 58. Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, 307, 319. See, for example, Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (London: Papermac, 2000), 282; and Watson, Fighting Different Wars, 187. Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, 317–318. Smith, The Second Battlefield, 119. Dust jacket blurb to Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front. Theyre Lee-Elliott, ‘The Art of the Book-Jacket’, Now and Then 34 (1929), 35–36. Publisher and Bookseller, 31 May 1929, 994. Ibid. James B. Wharton, Squad (London: Bodley Head, 1929), 9, 50. Hemingway’s novel was also made into a Hollywood film in 1932. Publisher and Bookseller, 2 August 1929, 163. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, (1929; repr., London: Vintage, 2005), 165. Now and Then 24 (1929), 47. Egremont, Sassoon, 181. Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 242–246. Lise Jaillant, ‘Sapper, Hodder and Stoughton, and the Popular Literature of the Great War’, Book History 14 (2011), 148. Frederic Manning, Her Privates We (1929; repr., London: Serpent’s Tail, 1999), 141, 150, 161. Publisher and Bookseller, 2 August 1929, 175.

216

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Notes

123 Cited in Jonathan Marwil, Frederic Manning: An Unfinished Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988), 257. 124 Ibid., 253. 125 Jonathan Rose, ‘Peter Davies Limited’, BLPH, 79. 126 Marwil, Frederic Manning, 254. Davies also published Charles Carrington’s memoir, A Subaltern’s War (1929), and had similarly urged Carrington to complete the work swiftly so as to capitalize on the boom. See Isherwood, The British Publishing Industry and Commercial Memories of the First World War, 335. 127 Marwil, Frederic Manning, 257. 128 Jacob Omnium, ‘Under Cover’, Publisher and Bookseller, 28 March 1930, 697. 129 Robert Graves to Jonathan Cape, August 1931, in In Broken Images: The Selected Letters of Robert Graves, 1914–1946, ed. Paul O’ Prey (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 216. 130 Dust jacket blurb to Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929). 131 Publisher and Bookseller, 29 November 1929, 1067. 132 Graves, Good-bye to All That, 240–241, 283, 264, 147, 322, 117. 133 Robert Graves, But It Still Goes On (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930), 16. 134 Miranda Seymour, Robert Graves: Life on the Edge (London: Doubleday, 1995), 192. 135 Dust jacket blurb to Charles MacArthur, War Bugs (London: Hutchinson, 1929). BL, AAD/1995/8/07/314. 136 Trout, On the Battlefield of Memory, 2. 137 The book was published in the USA by Harcourt Brace in 1930. 138 Mary Conger Vanamee, Vanamee (London: Faber, 1929), 218. 139 Publisher and Bookseller, 11 October 1929, 728. 140 This controversy will be explored in detail in the following chapter. 141 Publisher and Bookseller, 24 January 1930, 104. 142 Carol Acton, ‘Price, Evadne (1896–1985)’, ODNB http://www.oxforddnb.com. oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/76100, accessed 18 January 2017. 143 Smith, The Second Battlefield, 107. 144 Ibid., 115. 145 Publisher and Bookseller, 11 October 1929, 732. 146 Publisher and Bookseller, 28 February 1930, 398. 147 Another collection of this nature was John Brophy’s prose anthology, The Soldier’s War (London: Dent, 1929). 148 See John R. Turner, ‘Eyre and Spottiswoode’, in Anderson and Rose, British Literary Publishing Houses 1820–1880, 133–137. Jerrold saw action with the Royal Naval Division in Gallipoli and France, and was severely wounded at Beaumont Hamel in November 1916. See Jason Tomes, ‘Jerrold, Douglas Francis (1893–1964)’, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/34185, accessed 21 February 2017.

Notes

217

149 Einhaus, The Short Story and the First World War, 41. 150 Edmund Blunden, introduction to Great Short Stories of the War: England, France, Germany, America, ed. H. C. Minchin (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1930), ii, vi. 151 Publisher and Bookseller, 2 May 1930, 917–918. 152 These figures are listed in the preliminary pages to Blunden’s signed edition of the book. 153 For a brief description of the subtle variations between these two editions of the collection, see World War One Short Stories, ed. Bob Blaisdel (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2013), ix.

2 ‘The Bloodless War’: Reception and Controversy during the Interwar Years 1 A. C. Ward, The Nineteen-Twenties: Literature and Ideas in the Post-War Decade (London: Methuen, 1930), 12. 2 See, for example, Hynes, A War Imagined, 434; and Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 109. 3 Watson, Fighting Different Wars, 217. 4 See, for example, Cecil, The Flower of Battle, 5; and Bond, The Unquiet Western Front, 51. 5 Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’, 4. 6 Fiona Reid, Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain 1914– 1930 (London: Continuum, 2010), 10. 7 Todman, The Great War, 130. 8 Angela Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend: Munitions Workers in the Great War (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1994), 106–109. 9 Hynes, A War Imagined, 408. 10 Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day 1919–1946 (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 119. 11 Todman, The Great War, 130. 12 Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’, 394. 13 John Keiger, ‘Crossed Wires, 1904–1919’, in Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal (eds), Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 42. 14 David Stevenson, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War (London: Penguin, 2005), 567. 15 Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’, viii. 16 McAleer, Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain, 57. 17 Feather, A History of British Publishing, 186.

218

218 18 19 20 21

22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Notes Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’, 392. The Times, 11 December 1928, 14. ‘The War as It Was’, Daily Mirror, 23 January 1929, 9. For a detailed analysis of the critical reception of the book in Germany, see Thomas F. Schneider, ‘ “The Truth about the War Finally.” Critics’ Expectations of War Literature during the Weimar Republic: The Reception of Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues [All Quiet on the Western Front], 1928–1930’, Journalism Studies 17/4 (2016), 490–501. ‘German War Books’, Manchester Guardian, 17 April 1929, 10. Herbert Read, ‘Books of the Quarter’, The Criterion, April 1929, 549. St. John Ervine, ‘A Box of Books’, Daily Express, 2 May 1929, 6. Ervine, a novelist and playwright, had served as a lieutenant in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. In 1918, while serving in France, he sustained a severe injury which required him to have his left leg amputated. See John Cronin, ‘Irvine, John Greer (1883–1971)’, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/31084, accessed 2 February 2017. Cyril Falls, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, Times Literary Supplement (hereafter TLS), 18 April 1929, 314. Ibid. ‘Frank German Book on the War’, Daily Mirror, 17 April 1929, 20. Arnold Bennett, Evening Standard, 23 November 1929, 9. Orlo Williams, ‘A Farewell to Arms’, TLS, 28 November 1929, 998. W. R. Inge, ‘Journey’s End and Some War Books’, Evening Standard, 9 October 1929, 7. Inge wrote for the Evening Standard between 1921 and 1946. He was also an Anglican Priest, serving as the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral between 1911 and 1934. During the conflict, Inge had helped to popularize the poetry of Rupert Brooke, reading his poem ‘The Soldier’ from the pulpit on Easter Sunday, 1915. See Matthew Grimley, ‘Inge, William Ralph (1860–1954)’, ODNB, http://www. oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/34098, accessed 23 August 2016. Ibid., 7. See, for example, Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 9; Todman, The Great War, 162–163; and Reynolds, The Long Shadow, 207. Hynes, A War Imagined, 302. ‘New Books’, Manchester Guardian, 29 December 1920, 3. ‘Books and Writers’, Sunday Times, 19 December 1920, 7. Manchester Guardian, 30 November 1921, 5. Ibid. Founded in 1908, Sidgwick and Jackson had developed a reputation for poetry publishing, profiting immensely from the success of Rupert Brooke’s verse during the war. See Dorothy W. Collin, ‘Sidgwick and Jackson’, BLPH, 307–314.

Notes 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63

219

C. P., ‘Poems of To-Day’, Manchester Guardian, 25 July 1922, 7. ‘A War Poet’, Manchester Guardian, 20 July 1925, 5. See, for example, Todman, The Great War, 162. Michael Paris, Over the Top: The Great War and Juvenile Literature in Britain (London: Praeger, 2004), 10. An Anthology of War Poems, ed. Frederick Brereton (London: Collins, 1930). Sunday Times, 9 November 1930, 9. Dilys Powell, Sunday Times, 9 November 1930, 9. H. M. Tomlinson, ‘War Books’, The Criterion, April 1930, 418. Born in 1873, Tomlinson had served as an official war correspondent on the Western Front during the conflict. See Derek Hudson, ‘Tomlinson, Henry Major (1873–1958)’, rev. Marc Brodie, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/ article/36533, accessed 21 February 2017. See, for example, Ernest de Selincourt, ‘Isaac Rosenberg’s Poems’, TLS, 15 June 1922, 392; and ‘Isaac Rosenberg’, The Observer, 3 September 1922, 4. ‘Armistice Day’, The Times, 8 November 1930, 9. Gregory, The Silence of Memory, 133. ‘Books of the Day’, Manchester Guardian, 6 May 1931, 5. Dilys Powell, ‘The Poetry of Pity’, Sunday Times, 10 May 1931, 10. See Modern English Poetry: 1882–1932, ed. R. L. Megroz (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1933). Introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, ed. W. B. Yeats (Oxford: Clarendon, 1936), xxxiv. John Lehmann, ‘Fifty Years of Poetry’, The Listener, 1 March 1933, xii. R. A. S. Redmayne, ‘Mr. Yeats and Modern Poetry’, The Listener, 2 December 1936, iv. Letters on Poetry from W.B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley, ed. Dorothy Wellesley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940), 21. Wilfrid Gibson, ‘Twenty Years After: Isaac Rosenberg’s Collected Works’, The Observer, 4 July 1937, 10. Gibson himself was a war poet. Ian Parsons was an editor at Chatto & Windus, and would continue to play an important role in the dissemination of war poetry during the 1960s. See Chapter 5 for a discussion of this. Introduction to The Progress of Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Hardy to the Present Day, ed. Ian Parsons (London: Chatto & Windus, 1936), xxiv. Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 9. Reynolds, The Long Shadow, 207. Siegfried Sassoon, Diary, 19 March 1929, Cambridge University Library Manuscripts Department (hereafter CUL), MS Add 9852/1/28. See Enrst Jünger, The Storm of Steel, tr. Basil Creighton (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929).

20

220 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Notes Siegfried Sassoon, Diary, 18 December 1929, CUL, MS Add 9852/1/30. Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon: The Journey from the Trenches, 190. Siegfried Sassoon, Diary, 15 November 1929, CUL, MS Add 9852/1/28. Siegfried Sassoon to Robert Graves, 7 February 1930, in In Broken Images, ed. Paul O’ Prey, 200. Reginald Arkell, ‘The Puppets’, Daily Express, 7 July 1930, 10. St. John Ervine, ‘I Say There Are Too Many War Novels’, Daily Express, 3 October 1929, 8. Bracco, Merchants of Hope, 76–80. Ervine, ‘I Say There Are Too Many War Novels’, Daily Express, 3 October 1929, 8. Bracco, Merchants of Hope, 80, 40. J.C. Squire, ‘Books in 1929: A Bird’s Eye View’, in The Observer, 29 December 1929, 4. Squire, born in 1884, was a poet and literary editor, and had established the literary magazine The London Mercury in 1919. Despite having strong views on how the war should be represented, he had been declared as unfit for active service, instead performing home guard duties during the conflict. See Edmund Blunden, ‘Squire, Sir John Collings (1884–1958)’, rev. Clare L. Taylor, ODNB, http:// www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/36227, accessed 18 January 2017. Cyril Falls, War Books: An Annotated Bibliography of Books about the Great War (1930; repr., London: Greenhill, 1989), viii, xii, xiii. Ibid., 202, 279, 183, 292. See, for example, Hynes, A War Imagined, 424. Douglas Jerrold, The Lie about the War: A Note on Some Contemporary War Books (London: Faber and Faber, 1930), 10, 18. Ibid., 25. See, for example, Bond, The Unquiet Western Front, 81. See, for example, Ford Madox Ford, A Man Could Stand Up– (1926; repr., Manchester: Carcanet, 2011), 77; and Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930; repr., London: Faber, 1997), 46. Jon Stallworthy, Survivors’ Songs: From Maldon to the Somme (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 103. Jerrold, The Lie about the War, 31, 30. Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion, 1996), 13. Jessica Meyer, Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 6. Jerrold, The Lie about the War, 33, 34. H. M. Tomlinson, ‘War Books’, The Criterion, April 1930, 419. Herbert Read, ‘Books of the Quarter’, The Criterion, July 1930, 764–765, 767, 768. Ward, Nineteen-Twenties, 147, 148.

Notes 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

123

221

Ibid., 149. ‘This War Book Business’, Weekend Review, 3 May 1930. Ward, Nineteen-Twenties, 149. Sara Haslam, ‘A Literary Intervention: Writing Alcohol in British Literature, 1915– 1930’, First World War Studies 4/2(2013), 219. Ward, Nineteen-Twenties, 150. ‘The Lighter Side’, Nottingham Evening Post, 2 January 1930, 4. Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 276. ‘All Quiet Banned Again’, Western Daily Press, 31 October 1929, 6. ‘War Book Causes a Controversy’, Western Daily Press, 13 March 1930, 7. See, for example, Daily Express, 4 September 1929, 7. Aled Jones, ‘The British Press, 1919–1945’ in Dennis Griffiths (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the British Press (London: Macmillan, 1992), 48. See, for example, Evening Standard, 17 October 1929, 1. See, for example, Evening Standard, 15 November 1929, 1. Infantry Lance Corporal, ‘Is It Fair?’, Hull Daily Mail, 11 November 1929, 5. ‘Letters to the Editor’, Hull Daily Mail, 13 November 1929, 11. H. A. Jones to Siegfried Sassoon, 7 June 1929, CUL, MS Add 9375/568. ‘Novel Reader’, letter to the editor, Daily Mirror, 30 September 1929, 9. W. M., ‘Books of Hate’, Daily Mirror, 1 October 1929, 9. Letter to the editor, Daily Mirror, 2 October 1929, 9. ‘Bristol’s Own Re-union’, Western Daily Press, 27 January 1930, 7. ‘British Legion’, The Times, 17 February 1930, 8. ‘Soldiers in War Books’, Western Gazette, 21 February 1930, 4. Brian Bond, Survivors of a Kind: Memoirs of the Western Front (London: Continuum, 2008), 120. Haslam, ‘A Literary Intervention’, 223–224. ‘Legionnaires Defend the Dead’, Daily Express, 12 May 1930, 11. ‘War Books Criticised’, Daily Mirror, 11 June 1930, 21. Brigadier-General C. D. Baker-Carr, letter to the editor, The Times, 7 April 1930, 15. See the letters to the editor in The Times, 7–19 April 1930. General Ivor Maxse, letter to the editor, The Times, 9 April 1930, 17. Letter to the editor, The Times, 11 April 1930, 10. ‘This War Book Business’, Week-end Review, 3 May 1930. ‘The Pen and the Sword’, The Times, 10 April 1930, 17. Lieutenant-Colonel W. B. Little, letter to the editor, The Times, 17 April 1930, 10. This was also true of most wartime responses to the war. Death and suffering, of course, could not be entirely elided, but the war’s purpose was almost always affirmed, be it in the poems of Rupert Brooke or the adventure stories of Sapper. Captain E. B. Latham, letter to the editor, The Times, 14 April 1930, 8.

2

222

Notes

124 Gregory, The Silence of Memory, 98. 125 Norman Venner, ‘The Young and the War’, Daily Mirror, 11 November 1929, 7. 126 Evelyn Waugh, ‘The War and the Younger Generation’, The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), 61–62. 127 Norman Venner, ‘The Young and the War’, Daily Mirror, 11 November 1929, 7. 128 ‘Headmaster of Eton on War Books’, The Times, 5 February 1931, 8. 129 ‘Ideals in Education’, The Times, 1 January 1931, 9. 130 Graves, for instance, reflects disdainfully on his education at Charterhouse in Good-bye to All That. Aldington, as I demonstrate in Chapter 3, also explicitly attacks the public school ethos. 131 ‘War Books and Peace Talks’, Week-end Review, 29 March 1930. 132 Norman F. Ellison to Siegfried Sassoon, 28 November 1929, CUL, MS Add 9375/ 270. 133 Eksteins, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front and the Fate of the War’, 361. 134 ‘War Books’, Publisher and Bookseller, 24 January 1930, 131. 135 There are echoes here of the famous recruitment poster in which a child asks her father ‘Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?’ The implication in this poster, of course, is that her father did not serve, but many men, even if they had, were not always keen to answer this question in any detail. For a more detailed discussion of the transmission of war stories within families, see Todman, The Great War, 195–196. 136 Vernon Scannell, Drums of Morning: Growing Up in the Early Thirties (London: Robson, 1992), 72–73. 137 Ibid., 73–74. 138 See John Mole, ‘Causley, Charles Stanley (1917–2003)’, ODNB, http://www. oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/92911, accessed 24 February 2017. 139 Charles Causley, ‘A Kitchen in the Morning’, in Harry Chambers (ed.), Causley at 70 (Calstock: Peterloo Poets, 1987), 104. 140 Miller, ‘Towards a Popular Canon: Education, Young Readers and Authorial Identity in Great Britain between the Wars’, in Shafquat Towheed and Edmund G. C. King (eds), Reading and the First World War: Readers, Texts, Archives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 56. 141 As I demonstrate in Chapter 3, the growing appeal of pacifism and increasing fears of a future war during the 1930s would contribute to the success of Vera Brittain’s autobiography Testament of Youth (1933). 142 Paul Doerr, British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939: ‘Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 162. 143 ‘War Books and Peace Talks’, Week-end Review, 29 March 1930. 144 Paris, Warrior Nation, 185.

Notes

223

145 George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the Two World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 142. 146 ‘Toadstools on the Tombs’, Western Morning News and Mercury, 10 February 1930, 7. 147 Scannell, Drums of Morning, 71, 73. 148 Tim Kendall, Modern English War Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 106. 149 Samuel Hynes, The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s (London: Bodley Head, 1976), 248–250. 150 Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties (London: Hogarth, 1938), 45, 179. 151 Ibid., 74, 76. 152 Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 193. 153 This ‘longing’ no doubt encouraged Isherwood to accompany Auden to China in 1938, where the two of them documented the Sino-Japanese war. See W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Journey to a War (London: Faber and Faber, 1939). 154 Isherwood began to rebel against these values during the later years of his public school education at Repton, particularly after he discovered he was homosexual. This would have been difficult to reconcile with traditional constructions of masculinity, and must have contributed to his sense of inadequacy. See Peter Parker, Isherwood: A Life (London: Picador, 2004), 64. 155 George Orwell, ‘My Country Right or Left’, in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, I: An Age Like This, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (London: Penguin, 1970), 589. 156 For an overview of Spender’s life, see John Sutherland, ‘Spender, Sir Stephen Harold (1909–1995)’, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm. oclc.org/view/article/57986, accessed 24 February 2017. For Auden, see Edward Mendelson, ‘Auden, Wystan Hugh (1907–1973)’, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb. com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/30775, accessed 24 February 2017. 157 Desmond Graham, Keith Douglas: A Biography 1920–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 41 158 Laura Marcus, ‘The Great War in Twentieth Century Cinema’, in Sherry (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Great War, 280. 159 For a discussion of the film and its reception, see Nicholas Reeves, ‘Cinema, Spectatorship and Propaganda: Battle of the Somme (1916) and Its Contemporary Audience’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 17/1 (1997), 5–28. 160 For an overview of cinematic representations of the First World War, see Marcus, ‘The Great War in Twentieth Century Cinema’. 161 Scott Eyman, Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer (London: Robson Books, 2005), 112.

24

224

Notes

162 Leslie Midkiff Debauche, ‘The United States’ Film Industry and World War One’, in Michael Paris (ed.), The First World War and Popular Cinema: 1914 to Present (Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 157. Whereas What Price Glory? depicted trench warfare, Wings, as its title suggests, concerned aerial warfare, and related the experience of two combat pilots in the US Army Air Service. 163 Mark Glancy, Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain: From the 1920s to the Present (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 80. 164 Introduction to Paris (ed.), The First World War and Popular Cinema: 1914 to Present, 2. 165 Philip Kemp, ‘Whale, James (1889–1957)’, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com. oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/57320, accessed 19 January 2017. 166 ‘ “Journey’s End” on Monday’, The Bioscope, 9 April 1930, 33. 167 Journey’s End (1930), [Film] Dir. James Whale, UK: Welsh Pearson. 168 ‘Triumph for British Pictures’, The Bioscope, 16 April 1930, 21. 169 ‘Box Office Film Reviews’, The Bioscope, 16 April 1930, 31. 170 All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), [Film] Dir. Lewis Milestone, USA: Universal Pictures. 171 Andrew Kelly, Filming All Quiet on the Western Front: ‘Brutal Cutting, Stupid Censors, Bigoted Politicos’ (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 113. 172 ‘ “All Quiet” Creates a Noise’, The Bioscope, 11 February 1931, 45. 173 ‘The Week on the Screen’, The Guardian, 14 June 1930, 7. 174 The Bioscope, 11 June 1930, 29. 175 Sydney Carroll, ‘Film Notes’, Sunday Times, 22 June 1930, 6. 176 This is not to say that Hollywood had entirely embraced disillusionment with the war by this point. Although All Quiet on the Western Front conveyed strong antiwar themes, other Hollywood productions, such as the aviation film Hell’s Angels (1930), still expressed the potential romance of warfare, even amidst depictions of its horror. See Trout, On the Battlefield of Memory, 6. 177 Tell England (1930), [Film] Dir. Anthony Asquith, UK: British Instructional Films. 178 ‘Tell England’, The Times, 3 March 1931, 12. 179 Michael Paris, ‘British Feature Films and the First World War, 1919–1997’, in The First World War and Popular Cinema, 60, 65.

3 Marketing Myth: Richard Aldington, Vera Brittain and the Memory of the First World War 1 Vera Brittain, ‘New Fiction: Some Important Novels’, Time and Tide, 4 October 1929, 1182. 2 Vera Brittain, ‘ “Their Name Liveth”: Forgetting Women’s War Work’, Manchester Guardian, 13 November 1929, 8.

Notes

225

3 For a detailed account of Aldington’s life, see Charles Doyle, Richard Aldington: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1989) The imagist poets advocated the use of free verse, and favoured direct, precise language. 4 Ibid., 341. 5 As noted in the introduction to this book, the majority of soldiers did in fact return home. 6 Richard Aldington, Death of a Hero (1929; repr., London: Hogarth, 1984), 161. All citations are from this edition of the book. 7 Ibid., 323, 291, 280. 8 Aldington, Death of a Hero, 287. 9 Ibid., 35. 10 Ibid., 31, 253. 11 See, for example, Siegfried Sassoon, ‘The Blighters’ and ‘Glory of Women’, in The War Poems, ed. Rupert Hart-Davies (London: Faber and Faber, 1983). 12 Aldington, Death of a Hero, 201, 341. 13 See, for example, Gregory, The Last Great War, 294; and Helen B. McCartney, Citizen Soldiers: The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 89–90. Both Gregory and McCartney argue that civilians maintained strong ties with soldiers at the front. 14 Aldington, Death of a Hero, 79. It is worth noting that this critique is negated somewhat by Aldington’s celebration of soldierly masculinity later in the novel. 15 Ibid., 23, 35. 16 Doyle, Richard Aldington, 126. 17 Richard Aldington to Charles Prentice, 30 March 1929, Chatto & Windus Archive, The Archive of British Publishing and Printing, the University of Reading (hereafter UoR), CW 48/3. 18 Quoted in Christopher Ridgewell, introduction to Aldington, Death of a Hero, iii. 19 Aldington to Prentice, 1 May 1929, UoR, CW 48/3. 20 Aldington to Prentice, 11 May 1929, UoR, CW 48/3. 21 Prentice to Aldington, 15 May 1929, UoR, Chatto Letter Book 24. 22 Quoted in Susan Schreibman, ‘Richard Aldington: An Englishman, Thomas Greevey: An Irishman’, in Alain Blayac and Caroline Zilboorg (eds), Richard Aldington: Essays in Honour of the Centenary of His Birth (Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, 1994), 117. 23 J. H. Willis Jr., ‘The Censored Language of War: Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero and Three Other War Novels of 1929’, Twentieth Century Literature 4/4 (1999), 469–470. 24 Prentice to Aldington, 15 May 1929, UoR, Chatto Letter Book 24. 25 Aldington to Prentice, 30 March 1929, UoR, CW 48/3. 26 Aldington to Prentice, 16 May 1929, UoR, CW 48/3. 27 Prentice to Aldington, 2 July 1929, UoR, Chatto Letter Book 24.

26

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Notes

28 Willis, ‘Censored Language of War’, 484. 29 Aldington to Prentice, 28 June 1929, UoR, CW 48/3. 30 For a discussion of Nash’s life and work, see Andrew Causey, Paul Nash (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). 31 See Richard Aldington, Images of War (London: Beaumont Press, 1919). Only 200 copies of this limited edition were published. Nash’s drawings accompany individual poems within the collection. 32 Prentice to Aldington, 2 July 1929, UoR, Chatto Letter Book 24. 33 Aldington to Prentice, 4 August 1929, UoR, CW 48/3. 34 Prentice to Aldington, 7 August 1929, UoR, Chatto Letter Book 25. 35 Dust jacket blurb of Richard Aldington, Death of a Hero (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929). 36 Ibid. 37 Aldington, Death of a Hero, 241. 38 Todman, The Great War, 53. 39 Aldington to Prentice, 22 September 1929, UoR, CW 48/3. 40 Prentice to Aldington, 23 September 1929, UoR, Chatto Letter Book 25. 41 Swinnerton, Authors and the Book Trade, 79. 42 Aldington to Prentice, 25 September 1929, UoR, CW 48/3. 43 Publisher and Bookseller, 27 September 1929, 543. 44 Gerald Gould, ‘New Novels: War and Peace’, The Observer, 22 September 1929, 6. 45 Arnold Bennett, Evening Standard, 19 September 1929, 7. 46 J. C. Squire, ‘Books in 1929: A Bird’s Eye View’, in The Observer, 29 December 1929, 4. 47 T. M., ‘Books of the Day’, Manchester Guardian, 25 October 1929, 7. 48 Ralph Strauss, ‘New Fiction’, Sunday Times, 22 September 1929, 9. 49 Edmund Blunden, ‘The War Generation’, TLS, 19 September 1929, 713. 50 Aldington to Prentice, 27 September 1929, UoR, CW 48/3. 51 Blunden, ‘The War Generation’, TLS, 19 September 1929, 713. 52 St. John Ervine, ‘I Say There Are Too Many War Novels’, Daily Express, 3 October 1929, 8. See Chapter 2 for a discussion of this article. 53 Prentice to Aldington, 19 September 1929, UoR, Chatto Letter Book 25. 54 Wilson, ‘Libraries, Reading Patterns and Censorship’, 46. 55 Nicola Wilson, ‘Virginia Woolf, Hugh Walpole, the Hogarth Press, and the Book Society’, English Literary History 79 (2012), 245. 56 Prentice to Aldington, 13 August 1929, UoR, Chatto Letter Book 25. 57 Prentice to Aldington, 2 October 1929, UoR, Chatto Letter Book 25. 58 Doyle, Richard Aldington, 128. 59 Aldington to Prentice, 21 December 1929, UoR, CW 48/3.

Notes

227

60 For a discussion of Brittain’s earlier attempts at writing about the war, see Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain and the First World War (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 111–130. 61 The nurses working in Voluntary Aid Detachments are often erroneously described as ‘VADs’, but the term ‘VAD’ in fact refers to the units in which these nurses worked, not the nurses themselves. 62 For a detailed biography, see Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain – A Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1995). 63 Vera Brittain to Macmillan New York, 25 July 1933, Vera Brittain Archive, William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada (hereafter McM), K1. 64 Through the use of the word ‘sacrifice’, however, Brittain perhaps unwittingly invests the war with more meaning than she intends. 65 Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (1929; repr., London: Penguin, 2005), 167. See Chapter 2 for a more detailed discussion of the emergence of this myth. 66 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 276. 67 Watson, Fighting Different Wars, 259, 254. 68 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 151, 9. 69 Vera Brittain to Macmillan New York, 25 July 1933, McM, K1. 70 Jeremy D. Popkin, History, Historians, and Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 11. 71 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 291–292. 72 As demonstrated in Chapter 2, the war would continue to hold an allure for the young in the 1930s. 73 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 370. 74 Vera Brittain to Macmillan New York, 25 July 1933, McM, K1. 75 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 488, 470. 76 Ibid., 490. There is an interesting parallel here with the alienation that many soldiers experienced when they returned home from the war. 77 Vera Brittain, ‘By Way of Explanation’, McM, A5, Box 2. 78 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 608, 472. 79 J. M. Winter, The Great War and the British People (London: Macmillan, 1986), 87–97. 80 Wohl, The Generation of 1914, 115. 81 Vera Brittain, ‘By Way of Explanation’, McM, A5, Box 2. 82 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 91. 83 As noted in the introduction to this book, the myth had little basis in historical reality. 84 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 317.

28

228

Notes

85 See, for example, Marwick, The Deluge, 134. See also David Cameron’s speech regarding the government’s plans to mark the centenary of the First World War in Britain, http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/ww1-centenary/, accessed 23 November 2012. 86 It should be noted, however, that voting rights were not equalized until 1928, when all women over the age of twenty-one were granted the vote. 87 Marwick, The Deluge, 133. 88 De Groot, British Society and the First World War, 305. 89 For a more detailed discussion of the impact of the war on women, see Susan R. Grayzel, Women and the First World War (London: Pearson, 2002). 90 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 104. 91 Vera Brittain, ‘By Way of Explanation’, McM, A5, Box 2. 92 For a discussion of wartime accounts in which women reflect on their service, see Potter, Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print. Potter discusses a range of works, including Kate Finzi’s Eighteen Months in the War Zone (1916) and Olive Dent’s A V.A.D in France (1917). 93 Brittain, Testament of Youth, 140. 94 De Groot, Blighty, 310. 95 Sheila Hodges, Gollancz: The Story of a British Publishing House, 1928–1978 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1978), 16. For a detailed account of Gollancz’s life, see Ruth Dudley Edwards, Victor Gollancz: A Biography (London: Gollancz, 1997). 96 Egremont, Siegfried Sassoon, 331. 97 Victor Gollancz to Vera Brittain, 7 July 1932, McM, J41. 98 Deborah Gorham, Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 227. 99 Vera Brittain to Victor Gollancz, 8 July 1932, McM, K1. 100 Vera Brittain to Victor Gollancz, 8 February 1933, McM, K1. 101 Victor Gollancz to Vera Brittain, 20 February 1933, McM, J41. 102 Hodges, Gollancz, 5, 26, 32. 103 Victor Gollancz Ltd., Spring Catalogue 3, McM, A5, Box 3. 104 John Brown, ‘This War Book Slump’, Publisher and Bookseller, 1 August 1930, 299. 105 Faber, A Publisher Speaking, 56. 106 Jonathan Cape to Robert Graves, 6 December 1932, Jonathan Cape Archive, UoR, JCA18. 107 Victor Gollancz Ltd., Spring Catalogue 4, McM, A5, Box 3. 108 Ibid. 109 I have been unable to find conclusive evidence in the archive as to who was responsible for the final version of the blurb. 110 Winifred Holtby, specimen blurb for Testament of Youth, McM, A5, Box 3. 111 The Observer, 10 December 1933, McM E1. 112 McM, E1. The source of this press cutting is not stated in the file.

Notes 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123

124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144

229

‘The Lost Generation’, New Statesman and Nation, 16 September 1933, McM, E1. A. G. MacDonnell, The Bystander, 13 September 1933, McM, E1. ‘This Is What Happened’, Week-End Review, 26 August 1933, McM, E1. Margaret R. B. Shaw, New English Weekly, 12 October 1933, McM, E1. Brittain, Testament of Youth, 33, 308. Manchester Guardian, 17 November 1933, McM, E1. Eric Gillet, London Mercury, October 1933, McM, E1. Storm Jameson, ‘Miss Brittain Speaks for Her Generation: War as Woman Saw It’, Sunday Times, 3 September 1933, McM, E1. ‘The Lost Generation’, New Statesmen and Nation, 16 September 1933, McM, E1. Red Tape, November 1933, McM, E1. This mood for pacifism was also encouraged by events in India, with Mahatma Gandhi’s renewed campaigns of civil disobedience and peaceful protest gaining international recognition. Reynolds, The Long Shadow, 217–220, 223. Berry and Bostridge, Vera Brittain, 350. Methodist Times and Leader, 14 September 1933, McM, E1. ‘Youth in the Great War’, The Scotsman, 4 September 1933, McM, E1. E. E. Kellett, ‘A Woman’s Story’, News Chronicle, 28 August 1933, McM, E1. Watson, Fighting Different Wars, 261. Eric J. Leed, No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 110. Bourke, Dismembering the Male, 133. Sunday Chronicle, 17 September 1933, McM, E1. James Agate, ‘A Woman’s Cavalcade’, Daily Express, 31 August 1933, McM, E1. B. K. Seymour, Women’s Journal, September 1933, McM, E1. ‘The Women Who Were Left Behind’, Sunday Chronicle, 17 September 1933, McM, E1. John Brophy, ‘A Record of Brave Suffering’, Sunday Referee, 27 August 1933, McM, E1. Victor Gollancz to Vera Brittain, 29 December 1933, McM, J41. ‘What People Are Reading’, Today-Tomorrow, January 1934, McM, E1. Victor Gollancz to Vera Brittain, 19 June 1936, McM, J41. Sunday Times, 24 February 1935, McM, E1. This cheap edition was priced at three shillings and six pence. Victor Gollancz to Vera Brittain, 8 April 1943, McM, J41. See Chapter 1 for the sales figures of other war books during this period. A. Robertson to Vera Brittain, 29 September 1933, McM, J68. Vera Brittain to John Bickwell, 5 December 1933, McM, K1. Watson, Fighting Different Wars, 261.

230

230

Notes

145 146 147 148 149 150

Winifred Cummings to Vera Brittain, 6 December 1933, McM, J31. E. D. Young to Vera Brittain, 5 November 1933, McM, J111. E. Watkins to Vera Brittain, 11 October 1933, McM, J105. Vera Brittain to E. Watkins, 16 October 1933, Vera Brittain Archive, McM, K1. Christine Abbott to Vera Brittain, 27 September 1933, McM, J1. A. H. Jolliffe to Vera Brittain, 18 October 1933, McM, J54.

4 The War to End All Wars? Literature and Memory, 1939–1949 1 Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 314. 2 Valerie Holman, Print for Victory: Book Publishing in England: 1939–1945 (London: British Library, 2008), 250, 1. 3 Rose, ‘Modernity and Print I’, 350–351. 4 See, for example, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, ‘The First World War and Popular Literature’ (PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 2005), 53; and Todman, The Great War, 157. Todman draws his evidence from McAleer, Popular Reading and Publishing, who in turn has drawn some of his evidence from Mass Observation reports. In this section, I go on to scrutinize this source material further and draw different conclusions. 5 ‘Library Investigation’, 31 October 1939, Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex (hereafter MOA), TC Reading Habits, 20/3/C. 6 ‘Public Libraries in the War: The Revival of Reading’, 6 December 1939, MOA, TC Reading Habits, 20/3/C. 7 Report from Bridgewater Library, Somerset, 13 January 1940, MOA, TC Reading Habits, 20/3/D. 8 Report from Hampstead Public Library, London, 22 February 1940, MOA, TC Reading Habits, 20/3/D. 9 Report from North Athenaeum Library, Barnstaple, Devon, 12 March 1940, MOA, TC Reading Habits, 20/3/D. 10 Seven Pillars of Wisdom was first published in 1922, with an abridged version, titled Revolt in the Desert, published in 1927. This abridged text was published again after Lawrence’s death in 1935 and titled Seven Pillars of Wisdom. For a discussion of how the text relates to the broader memory of the war, see Thacker, British Culture and the First World War, 255–257. 11 Report from Stepney Public Library, London, 14 September 1940, MOA, TC Reading Habits, 20/3/G. 12 ‘Lending Libraries’, 21 September 1940, MOA, TC Reading Habits, 20/3/G.

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13 Katie Halsey, “‘Something Light to Take My Mind off the War”: Reading on the Home Front during the Second World War’, in Katie Halsey and W. R. Owens (eds), The History of Reading, II (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 93–94. 14 Report from the 12th Infantry Brigade, 29 June 1942, MOA, TC Reading Habits, 20/7/A. 15 Interview with an R.A.M.C officer, 10 June 1942, MOA, TC Reading Habits, 20/ 7/A. 16 Vernon Scannell, The Tiger and the Rose: An Autobiography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), 4. 17 Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in TwentiethCentury Warfare (London: Granta, 1999), 21. 18 Hynes, The Soldier’s Tale, 125. 19 Robert Graves, ‘The Poets of World War II’(1942), in The Common Asphodel: Collected Essays on Poetry, 1922–1949 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1949), 307. 20 For a further discussion of this point, see Stallworthy, Survivors’ Songs, 181. As Stallworthy argues, the notion that the Second World War did not inspire any great poetry is a myth, but for various reasons much of the conflict’s best poetry is not well known. 21 Keith Douglas, ‘Desert Flowers’, in Keith Douglas: Poems Selected by Ted Hughes, ed. Ted Hughes (London: Faber, 2006), 48. 22 Desmond Graham, Keith Douglas: A Biography, 1920–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 191–192. 23 W. D. Thomas, ‘War and the Poet’, The Listener, 1 May 1941, 633. 24 Lord David Cecil, ‘The Author in a Suffering World: War’s Impact on Our Literature’, TLS, 11 January 1941, 18. 25 ‘Doggerel’, The Times, 27 March 1943, 5. 26 Owen’s most recent editor, Jon Stallworthy, had highlighted these literary qualities, among others, as reasons for Owen’s enduring appeal. See Stallworthy, Survivors’ Songs, 77–80. 27 Julian Symons was born in 1912 and after the Second World War would also make a name for himself as a crime writer. 28 Preface to An Anthology of War Poetry, ed. Julian Symons (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1942), vii. 29 Raymond Mackenzie, ‘Penguin Books’, BLPH, 257. 30 Preface to An Anthology of War Poetry, ed. Symons, viii. 31 Ibid. 32 ‘Cramped in That Funneled Hole’, for instance, does not feature in any of the following major anthologies that have been published since the millennium: Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology, ed. Tim Kendall (Oxford: Oxford University

23

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33

34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

42

43 44 45

Notes Press, 2013); First World War Poems, ed. Andrew Motion (London: Faber and Faber, 2003); First World War Poems from the Front, ed. Paul O’Prey (London: Imperial War Museum, 2014); The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, ed. George Walter (London: Penguin, 2006). None of the other poems selected by Symons – unlike ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed for Youth’ – appear in all four of these recent collections, although each of them appears in at least one. Born in 1893, Nichols had curtailed his studies at Oxford in order to join the Royal Field Artillery as a second lieutenant. He travelled to France in August 1915, and served in the frontline in September of that year. Nichols exhibited a number of symptoms often associated with shell shock, and, after collapsing on 26 September, was invalided out of the army. He was eventually declared permanently unfit for military service, instead working in the Foreign Office and for the Ministry of Information towards the end of the war. Many of his most influential wartime poems were collected in Invocation (1915) and Ardours and Endurances (1917). See Edmund Blunden, ‘Nichols, Robert Malise Bowyer (1893–1944)’, rev. Sayoni Basu, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/35223, accessed 30 January 2017. Preface to Anthology of War Poetry, 1914–1918, ed. Robert Nichols (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1943), 18. Ibid., 95, 96. Ibid., 93. It is curious that, despite Nichols’s noted admiration for Owen, other poets are better represented in the collection. Blunden is afforded nine poems, and Sassoon as many as twelve. See Chapter 2 for a discussion of these responses. Preface to Anthology of War Poetry, ed. Nichols, 79. Robert Nichols, ‘Epic Wind’, in Anthology of War Poetry, ed. Nichols, 151. Victoria Stewart, ‘The Last War: The Legacy of the First World War in 1940s British Fiction’, in Jessica Meyer (ed.), British Popular Culture and the First World War (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 280. Stewart focuses on a broad range of popular fiction from the period, including James Hilton’s Random Harvest (1941), Edith Pargeter’s Ordinary People (1941) and Phyllis Bentley’s The Rise of Henry Morcar (1946). See Chapter 2 for a discussion of these works. Dust jacket blurb of Siegfried Sassoon, Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920 (London: Faber, 1945). Siegfried Sassoon, Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920 (1945; repr., London: Right Book Club, 1947), 55. Citations are to this edition of the text.

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46 Richard Aldington, Life for Life’s Sake: A Book of Reminiscences (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 160. 47 The title of the play is taken from Shakespeare’s Richard II, in which John of Gaunt refers to the English people as ‘This happy breed’. 48 Philip Hoare, Nöel Coward: A Biography (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), 62– 63, 219, 236. 49 Noel Coward, This Happy Breed, (London: William Heinemann, 1943), 7, 30. 50 Ibid., 9, 62. 51 Frankau, Self Portrait, 415. 52 Gilbert Frankau, Michael’s Wife (London: Macdonald, 1948), 261. 53 Aldington, Life for Life’s Sake, 187. 54 Frankau, Michael’s Wife, 447, 448. 55 Ibid., 479–483. 56 Vera Brittain, Account Rendered (1945; repr., London: Virago, 1982), 230. 57 Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 163. 58 Simon Wessely and Edgar Jones, Shell Shock to PTSD: Military Psychiatry from 1900 to the Gulf War (Hove: Psychology Press, 2005), 119. 59 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, ed. Ian Christie (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), 268. 60 Sassoon, Siegfried’s Journey, 80. Sassoon is quoting Winston Churchill, who had used this phrase in a conversation with Sassoon in 1918. 61 Aldington, Life for Life’s Sake, 110. 62 Quoted in P. M. H. Bell, The Origins of the Second World War in Europe (Harlow : Longman, 1986), 14. 63 Reynolds, The Long Shadow, 472, 279. 64 T. S. Eliot, East Coker (London: Faber, 1940), 13. 65 For a discussion of the arguments for and against this interpretation, see Bell, The Origins of the Second World War in Europe, 14–52. 66 Brittain, Account Rendered, 76. 67 Ibid., 289. 68 Vera Brittain, Born 1925 (1948; repr., London: Virago, 1982), 106, 262. 69 Dust jacket blurb of Vera Brittain, Born 1925 (London: Macmillan, 1948). 70 Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 35. 71 Sassoon, Siegfried’s Journey, 182. 72 Ibid., 141, 142. 73 Coward, This Happy Breed, 7, 65. 74 Brittain, Account Rendered, 46. 75 Aldington, Life for Life’s Sake, 225–226.

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76 A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (1961; repr., London: Penguin, 1991), 42. 77 See, for example, Adam P. Adamthwaite, The Making of the Second World War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977), 26; and Ruth Henig, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Routledge, 1985), 7. 78 See, for example, Sally Marks, ‘1918 and After: The Postwar Era’, in Gordon Martel (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: A. J. P. Taylor and the Historians (London: Routledge, 1999), 32; and Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2002), 493. 79 Alan Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking after the First World War, 1919– 1923 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 208. 80 Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 273–274. 81 Brittain, Account Rendered, 185. 82 Brittain, Born 1925, 112. 83 Sassoon, Siegfried’s Journey, 57. 84 Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon, 348. 85 Coward, This Happy Breed, 90. 86 Cole Lesley, The Life of Nöel Coward (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976), 197. 87 Coward, This Happy Breed, 99. 88 Aldington, Life for Life’s Sake, 163. 89 Stuart Hallifax, ‘“Over by Christmas”: British Popular Opinion and the Short War in 1914’, First World War Studies 1/2 (2010), 116. 90 Sassoon, Siegfried’s Journey, 203. 91 G. A. H. ‘Opera House: “This Happy Breed”’, Manchester Guardian, 20 October 1942, 3. 92 The Scotsman, 1 December 1942, 3. 93 See This Happy Breed 1944 [Film], Dir. David Lean, UK. Cineguild. Cineguild was a production company formed in 1944 by the director David Lean, the cinematographer Ronald Neame and the producer Anthony Havelock-Allan. 94 C. A. Lejeune, ‘The Films’, The Observer, 27 August 1944, 2. 95 Hoare, Nöel Coward, 329. 96 Due to the work only being published in America, it was unlikely to have been read widely in Britain, and its reception will therefore not be discussed here. 97 Dust jacket blurb of Siegfried Sassoon, Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920 (London: Faber, 1945). 98 Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon, 351. 99 Howard Spring, Sunday Graphic, 16 December 1945, 9. 100 Raymond Mortimer, ‘Books in General’, New Statesman and Nation, 19 January 1946, 48. 101 Ifor Evans, Time and Tide, 2 March 1946. 102 Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon, 351.

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103 Harold Nicholson, ‘Myself When Young’, The Observer, 6 January 1946, 3. 104 Macdonald was formed by T. T. MacDonald in London in 1938, although MacDonald would leave the firm in 1942. The company specialized in popular fiction, rather than highbrow works of literature, and published three original novels by Frankau after the Second World War. See David Linton, ‘Macdonald and Company (Publishers)’, BLPH, 195–196. 105 Alfred Loisy, ‘From Politics by Sport and Novels to Electronics’, Press and Journal, 5 June 1948, 2. 106 Vera Brittain to Harold Latham, 23 September 1942, McM, K6. 107 Account Rendered promotional material, McM, A14. 108 Vera Brittain to George Catlin, 31 August 1945, McM, K7. 109 Hugh P. A. Fausset, ‘Books of the Day’, Manchester Guardian, 7 September 1945, 3. 110 Elizabeth L. Sturch, ‘Saving the Innocents’, TLS, 8 September 1945, 425. 111 Lionel Hale, ‘In Midnights of November’, The Observer, 2 September 1945, 3. 112 Berry and Bostridge, Vera Brittain, 448–449. 113 Harold Macmillan to Vera Brittain, 10 December 1947, McM, J63. 114 B. Ifor Evans, English Literature between the Wars (London: Methuen, 1948), 108. 115 John O’London’s Weekly, 21 January 1949, McM, P1. 116 The Sphere, 8 January 1949, McM, P1. 117 News Review, 6 January 1949, McM, P1. 118 Western Mail, 12 January 1949, McM, P1.

5 Republishing the First World War: The Impact of the 1960s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

‘World War One Fever’, Sunday Times, 21 July 1963, 5. Todman, The Great War, 105. Ibid., 30, 33–34. Bond, The Unquiet Western Front, 62. See, for example, Bond, The Unquiet Western Front; Sheffield, Forgotten Victory; and MacCallum-Stewart, ‘The First World War and Popular Literature’. Bond, The Unquiet Western Front, 51–54. Todman, The Great War, 105–107, 191–194. See Chapter 1 for a discussion of the 1929 publication of the work and Graves’s engagement with the mythology of the war during this period. Esther MacCallum-Stewart, ‘Female Maladies? Reappraising Women’s Popular Literature of the First World War’, Women: A Cultural Review 17/1 (2006), 86. Richard Perceval Graves, introduction to Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That (1929; repr., London: Berghahn, 1995), xvii.

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11 Ibid., xviii. 12 Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929), 288. All references to the 1929 text are to this first edition of the book. 13 Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That (1929; rev. edn, London: Penguin, 2000), 202. This edition reproduces Graves’s 1957 version of the text. All references to the 1957 text are to this edition of the book. 14 Graves, Good-bye to All That (1929), 99. 15 Annika Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (London: Pearson, 2002), 123–124. 16 Graves, Good-bye to All That (1929), 278. 17 Ibid., 381. 18 Wessely and Jones, Shell Shock to PTSD, 119. 19 See Chapter 1 for a discussion of this. 20 Graves, Goodbye to All That (1957), 230. 21 I have been unable to locate sales figures for Cassell’s 1957 edition, but Penguin’s decision to publish the work as a paperback in 1964 suggests that it had proven popular in the preceding years. 22 G. S. Fraser, ‘The Poet at War’, TLS, 29 November 1957, 718. 23 The Weekly Scotsman, 1957, Penguin Archives, Bristol University (hereafter BU), DM 1107/1443. The exact date of this article is not contained within the file. 24 Yorkshire Post (1957), BU, DM 1107/1443. The exact date of this article is not contained within the file. 25 See, for example, MacCallum-Stewart, ‘Female Maladies?’, 85; Reynolds, The Long Shadow, 207; Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 7; and Todman, The Great War, 163. 26 John Coleman, ‘A Poet from the Trenches’, Sunday Times, 2 October 1960, 7. 27 Malcolm Bradbury, ‘War and the Poet’, The Guardian, 7 October 1960, 13. 28 Anthony Cronin, ‘Hero-Poet of Anti-War’, TLS, 18 November 1960, 742. 29 Harold Owen to Cecil Day Lewis, February 1962, UoR, CW 190/12. 30 Norah Smallwood to B. J. Smith, 8 April 1975, UoR, CW 350/11/1. 31 Michael Oliver, Benjamin Britten (London: Phaidon, 1996), 234. 32 Todman, The Great War, 165. 33 William Mann, introduction to the War Requiem Souvenir Programme, UoR, CW 213/4/1. 34 Ian Parsons to Harold Owen, 20 August 1964, UoR, CW 213/4/2. 35 Callum G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularization 1800–2000 (London: Routledge: 2001), 1. 36 My thanks to Jay Winter for suggesting this point. 37 Rita Spurdle to J. F. Bell, 12 March 1963, UoR, CW 213/4/1. The text referred to here is the Edmund Blunden edition. 38 Ian Parsons to Harold Owen, 25 September 1963, 4 December 1963, UoR, CW 213/ 4/1. See Chapter 2 for a discussion of Ian Parsons’s interwar anthology, The Progress of Poetry.

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39 Introduction to Wilfred Owen, The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, ed. Cecil Day Lewis (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963), 12. 40 Ibid., 22. 41 ‘Requiem for a Dead Soldier’, TLS, 7 November 1963, 908. 42 Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good – A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London: Little Brown, 2005), 258. 43 Bernard Bergonzi, ‘The Poetry of Pity’, The Guardian, 13 September 1963, 7. 44 James Reeves, review of The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, UoR, CW 213/4/1. 45 James Reeves to Ian Parsons, 11 October 1963, UoR, CW 213/4/1. 46 Despite this, I demonstrate in this chapter that poetry had a broader impact as a result of its wider dissemination through other media and through its eventual use in the education system. 47 James Reeves, review of The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, UoR, CW 213/4/1. 48 Introduction to Up the Line to Death: The War Poets 1914–1918, ed. Brian Gardner (London: Methuen, 1964), xix. 49 Ibid., xxii, xxv. 50 George Simmers, ‘The Leveller (in Up the Line to Death)’, https://greatwarfiction. wordpress.com/2009/06/18/the-leveller-in-up-the-line-to-death/, accessed 1 June 2016. 51 Introduction to The Men Who March Away, ed. Ian Parsons (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), 27. 52 Ibid., 14. 53 David Leach, ‘Inside Khe Sanh’, Sunday Times, 18 February 1968, 13. 54 Ian Wright, ‘Oh What a Pathetic War’, The Guardian, 27 June 1970, 11. 55 Susan Hill, introduction to Strange Meeting (Harlow : Longman, 1984), vii. Another popular work of this period influenced by the war poets was Jennifer Johnston’s How Many Miles to Babylon (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974). 56 MacCallum-Stewart, ‘The First World War and Popular Literature’, 109. 57 Jane Miller, ‘Casualty Report’, TLS, 29 October 1971, 1355. 58 MacCallum-Stewart, ‘The First World War and Popular Literature’, 113. 59 UCLES, A Level English Literature, June 1961, Cambridge Assessment Group Archives (hereafter CAGA). 60 All of these exam papers can be consulted at the Cambridge Assessment Group Archives. 61 UCLES, A Level English Literature, Summer 1972, CAGA. 62 See the relevant UCLES exam papers at the Cambridge Assessment Group Archives. 63 Ken Jones, Education in Britain: 1944 to the Present (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), 70. 64 The Waddell Report (1978), available online at http://www.educationengland.org. uk/documents/waddell/waddell1978.html#219, accessed 25 May 2016. 65 OCSEB, O Level English Literature, July 1967, CAGA.

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66 See the relevant OCSEB O Level examination papers available at the Cambridge Assessment Group Archives. In 1973 Cecil Day Lewis’s edition of Owen’s poetry was studied as a set text. In 1974 Owen’s poetry was studied in conjunction with Sherriff ’s Journey’s End and Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. 67 OCSEB, O Level English Literature, June 1970, CAGA. 68 OCSEB, O Level English Literature, November 1970, CAGA. 69 Janet Haffner to Harold Owen, 18 February 1966, UoR, CW 213/4/2. 70 Reynolds, The Long Shadow, 347. 71 George Simmers, ‘Up the Line to Death’, https://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/ 2010/10/10/up-the-line-to-death/, accessed 25 May 2016. 72 Conflict and Compassion, ed. John Skull (London: Hutchinson Educational, 1971). 73 Man Alive! An Anthology of Verse for Boys, ed. Peter Brown (London: University of London Press, 1967). 74 The Turning World, ed. D. J. Brindley (Huddersfield: Schofield and Sims, 1974), v. 75 Jay Winter, ‘Cultural Divergences in Patterns of Remembering the Great War in Britain and France’, in Tombs and Chabal (eds), Britain and France in Two World Wars, 166–167. See also Jay Winter, ‘Beyond Glory: First World War Poetry and Cultural Memory’, in Santanu Das (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Poetry of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 243. 76 The other poets inscribed upon the memorial are: Richard Aldington, Lawrence Binyon, Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Wilfrid Gibson, Robert Graves, Julian Grenfell, Ivor Gurney, David Jones, Robert Nichols, Herbert Read, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, Charles Sorley and Edward Thomas. 77 Owen of course died before he had the chance to compile the edition, but Sassoon did include this preface in his 1920 collection of Owen’s poems. 78 Hilary Rubinstein to Vera Brittain, 21 July 1958, McM, J41. 79 The Bookseller, 23 April 1960, McM, A5. 80 ‘The Reader Has His Reasons’, TLS, 3 June 1960, McM, A5. 81 John Terraine, ‘The Great War Books’, Sunday Times, 15 March 1964, 50. 82 Oliver Edwards, ‘The Writers’ War’, The Times, 19 November 1964, 16. 83 See the introduction to this book for a discussion of Aleida Assmann’s theories of cultural memory. 84 Carmen Callil, email to the author, 7 January 2013. 85 For a detailed analysis of Virago’s broader relationship with the feminist movement, see Simone Murray, Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 28–65. 86 Carmen Callil, email to the author, 7 January 2013. 87 Virago Promotional Booklet, 1978, Vera Brittain Archive, Somerville College, Oxford (hereafter SCO), 34/1. 88 Ibid.

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89 See the front and back cover of Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (1933; repr., London: Virago, 1978). 90 Williams served as Secretary of State for Education and Science in James Callaghan’s Labour government between 1976 and 1979. In 1981 she broke away from the Labour Party, co-founding the Social Democratic Party, which would later merge with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats. 91 Shirley Williams, preface to Brittain, Testament of Youth (1978), 9–10. 92 P. D. James, ‘The Women Who Went to War’, TLS, 5 May 1978, 492. 93 Over 21, April 1978, SCO, 34/1. 94 Philippa Toomey, ‘The Enormous Waste’, The Times, 27 April 1978, SCO, 34/1. 95 Carmen Callil, email to the author, 7 January 2013. 96 Jonathan Powell to H. Serials, 30 May 1978, SCO, 34/2. 97 ‘Part 1’, Testament of Youth, DVD, dir. Moira Armstrong (1979; London: BBC, 2010). 98 ‘Part 4’, Testament of Youth, DVD, dir. Moira Armstrong (1979; London: BBC, 2010). 99 Ibid. Haig made this speech in April 1918, while the allied forces were being forced back by the German Spring Offensive on the Western Front. 100 Todman, The Great War, 184. As Todman notes, these viewing figures were impressive, with the programme dominating the Sunday evening schedules. 101 Sunday Times, 16 December 1979, SCO, 25/2. 102 Phillip Purse, Sunday Telegraph, 18 November 1979, SCO, 34/3. 103 Daily Mail, 26 November 1979, SCO, 34/3. 104 Peter Blackman, ‘Taking Risks’, The Listener, 6 December 1979, SCO, 34/3. 105 Corinna Adam, ‘Review’, Radio Times, 6 December 1979, SCO, 34/3. 106 Andrew Osmond, letter to the editor, The Spectator, 22 December 1979, SCO, 34/3.

6 Remembering War, Resisting Myth: Literature, Memory and the Last Veterans 1 Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong (London: Vintage, 1994), 151. 2 The trilogy consists of Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993) and the Ghost Road (1995). For a variety of critical essays discussing the trilogy, see Sharon Monteith et al. (eds), Critical Perspectives on Pat Barker (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005). 3 Rachelle Thackray, ‘The Fifty Bestselling Books of the 1990s’, Independent, 25 September 1998, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-50-bestselling-books-of-the-1990s-1200522.html, accessed 24 June 2016. The hardback

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Notes was published by Hutchinson and the paperback was published by Vintage, both of which are Random House imprints. ‘The Big Read’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml, accessed 24 June 2016. http://www.sebastianfaulks.com/index.php/birdsong/, accessed 24 June 2016. Thackray, ‘The Fifty Bestselling Books of the 1990s’. See, for example, the AQA exam board’s A Level syllabus, http://www.aqa.org.uk/ subjects/english/as-and-a-level/english-literature-a-7711–7712/subject-content-alevel/texts-in-shared-contexts, accessed 5 July 2016. Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War between History and Memory in the Twentieth Century (London: Yale University Press, 2006), 17–51. Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 19. For a detailed discussion of these novels and a critique of how they perpetuate the mythology of the war, see MacCallum-Stewart, ‘The First World War and Popular Literature’. The Liddle Collection, housed at the University of Leeds, also contains around 750 oral history accounts of the First World War. The military historian Peter Liddle, who started the collection in the 1970s, was similarly motivated by the desire to record these responses while significant numbers of veterans were still alive. For a discussion of how these accounts and other oral histories have reinforced the mythology of the First World War, see Todman, The Great War, 200–208. Ibid., 219. In the area of fiction, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have been central to the company’s success. Bloomsbury’s academic division, the publisher of this book, was launched in 2008. For a history of the company, see http://www.bloomsbury-ir.co. uk/html/about/a_history.html, accessed 1 February 2017. Bloomsbury promotional video, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=AmiZtQamGNg, accessed 16 December 2011. Front cover to Harry Patch and Richard Van Emden, The Last Fighting Tommy (2007; repr., London: Bloomsbury, 2008). Henry Allingham and Dennis Goodwin, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer: The Life of Henry Allingham, the Oldest Surviving Veteran of the Great War (London: Mainstream, 2008), 157. Ibid., 210. Initially an independent publishing house, Mainstream formed a partnership with the Random House Group in 2005 in order to improve its financial clout. The company’s closure in 2013 came as a shock to many in the publishing industry. See David Robinson, ‘Edinburgh Publisher Mainstream to Close This Year’, The Scotsman, 28 February 2013, http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/ edinburgh-publisher-mainstream-to-close-this-year-1-2815813, accessed 1 February 2017.

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19 For a discussion of this poster and how the image has been appropriated since the First World War, see Stephen Heathorn, Haig and Kitchener in Twentieth Century Britain: Remembrance, Representation and Appropriation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 191–199. 20 For a discussion of these themes, see Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 64–69. 21 Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 11. 22 Paul Ricœur: Memory, History, Forgetting, tr. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 85, 129. 23 For a discussion of the concept of composure and its application to the testimony of Harry Patch, see Marlene A. Briggs, ‘Dis/composing the First World War in Britain: Trauma and Commemoration in the Memory of Harry Patch’, History and Memory 28/1 (2016), 71–109. 24 Thomson, Anzac Memories, 10. 25 Michael Roper, ‘Re-remembering the Soldier Hero: The Psychic and Social Construction of Memory in Personal Narratives of the Great War’, History Workshop Journal 5 (Autumn 2000), 184. 26 Allingham, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 62. 27 For a detailed discussion of these factors, see David Silbey, The British Working Class and Enthusiasm for War (London: Routledge, 2004). 28 Stevenson, 1914–1918, 201. 29 Adrian Gregory, ‘British “War Enthusiasm” in 1914: A Reassessment’, in Braybon (ed.), Evidence, History and the Great War, 80. 30 Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 55. 31 Stevenson, 1914–1918, 202. 32 See Dominic Hibberd, Wilfred Owen (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2002), 131–165, for a discussion of Owen’s life after the outbreak of the war but before his decision to enlist. 33 Gregory, ‘British “War Enthusiasm” ’, 69, 80. 34 Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 59. 35 Ibid., 71 36 Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing, 30. 37 Allingham, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 100. 38 Kate McLoughlin, ‘War and Words’, in The Cambridge Companion to War Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 22. 39 Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 74. 40 Ibid., 74, 77. 41 Allingham, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 16.

24

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47 48 49

50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Notes Ibid., 100, 216. Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, vi. Ibid., 94. Allingham, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 107. Estimates suggest that around 44 per cent of the British Army suffered injuries of varying severity. See Leo Van Bergen, Before My Helpless Sight: Suffering, Dying and Military Medicine on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 166. Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 103. Winter and Sivan, ‘Setting the Framework’, in War and Remembrance, 12. Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 8. I emailed Van Emden requesting more information regarding the questions he asked Patch during the writing of the work, but he was unable to provide any more detail. Richard van Emden, email to the author, 8 July 2013. Winter and Sivan, ‘Setting the Framework’, in War and Remembrance, 15. Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 102. Neil Barr and Gary Sheffield, ‘Douglas Haig, the Common Soldier and the British Legion’, in Brian Bond and Nigel Cave (eds), Haig: A Reappraisal 80 Years On (Barnsley : Pen and Sword, 2009), 227. Allingham, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 105. See the introduction for a discussion of these debates. Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929), 344. Siegfried Sassoon, ‘Everyone Sang’ in The War Poems, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (London: Faber, 1983), 144. Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (1933; repr., London: Penguin, 2005), 463. Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 128. Gregory, The Last Great War, 251. Quoted in Malcolm Brown, The Imperial War Museum Book of 1918: The Year of Victory (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1998), 286. Allingham, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 115. Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 137, 52. Allingham, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 122. Ibid., 160. Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 52. Ibid., 149. Allingham grew up in London, but lived with his newly wedded wife in Essex after being demobilized. See Chapter 3 for a more detailed discussion of this myth. Geoffrey Lakeman, ‘86 Years after the Great War, Hostilities End’, Daily Mirror, 9 November 2004, 26. Julie McCaffrey, Daily Mirror, 30 October 2006, 14. Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 202.

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71 Allingham, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 193, 119. 72 Matthew Stibbe, German Anglophobia and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 207. 73 For a discussion of this, see Panikos Panayi, Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees during the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 74 Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy, 203. 75 Allingham, Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 188. 76 Ian Finlayson, ‘In Short’, The Times, 1 September 2007, 11. 77 For a detailed analysis of how Patch was represented in the tabloid press, see Nick Webber and Paul Long, ‘The Last Post: British Press Representations of Veterans of the Great War’, Media, War and Conflict, 7/3 (2014), 273–290. 78 Caroline Jowett, ‘Spy Out a Host of Facts to Fascinate’, Daily Express, 21 December 2007, 48. 79 Douglas Wight, News of the World, 22 June 2008, 49. 80 See Peter Parker, Harry Patch and the Legacy of the War (London: Fourth Estate, 2009). 81 Peter Parker, Daily Telegraph, 18 August 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ books/non_fictionreviews/3562881/Kitcheners-Last-Volunteer-the-Life-of-HenryAllingham-the-Oldest-Surviving-Veteran-of-the-Great-War-Review.html, accessed 11 January 2012. 82 As I demonstrate in the conclusion to this book, this trend has become more pronounced in recent years, with a number of press articles challenging the myth of futility during the war’s centenary. 83 Quoted in David Smith, The Observer, 1 July 2007. 84 Nicholas Fearn, ‘Military Books: Tales of Heroism and Horror to Entice the Nonreading Male This Christmas’, Independent on Sunday, 9 December 2007, http:// www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/military-books-talesof-heroism-and-horror-to-entice-the-nonreading-male-this-christmas-763490. html?origin=internalSearch, accessed 11 January 2012. 85 Peter Parker, Daily Telegraph, 5 November 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3562881/Kitcheners-Last-Volunteer-the-Life-ofHenry-Allingham-the-Oldest-Surviving-Veteran-of-the-Great-War-Review.html, accessed 11 January 2012. 86 Val Hennessy, ‘Off to War at 19, Henry Is Still a Survivor at 112’, Daily Mail, 13 November 2007, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1084746/ Off-war-19-Henry-survivor-112-KITCHENER-8217-S-LAST-VOLUNTEERHenry-Allingham.html, accessed 11 January 2012. 87 Andy Crick, ‘World War One-der’, Sun, 20 June 2009, http://www.thesun.co.uk/ sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/2490283/British-war-veteran-is-worldsoldest.html, accessed 11 January 2012.

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88 Eleanor Bavidge, ‘The Public Private: The Last Veteran’, Journal of War and Culture Studies 2/2 (2009), 229. 89 R. Reed, review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 29 August 2007, http://www.amazon. co.uk/review/RKNJF605SMHUH/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 12 December 2011. 90 G. Stagg, review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 14 September 2009, http://www. amazon.co.uk/review/R9UEWBNE547IY/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 14 December 2011. 91 Ross J. Wilson, Cultural Heritage of the Great War in Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 144–146. 92 A. J. King, review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 5 February 2008, http://www. amazon.co.uk/review/R3MEBT8PIBSRC4/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 12 December 2011. 93 Valerie A. Wilde, review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 8 January 2010, http://www. amazon.co.uk/review/R2FU88BWYHO65C/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 12 December 2011. 94 Judi Donegan, review of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 18 February 2009, http:// www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/1845964160/ ref=cm_cr_pr_top_link_ 2?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints= 0&pageNumber=2&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDes cending, accessed 14 December 2011. 95 A. I. McCullough, review of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 2 September 2009, http:// www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/1845964160/ref=cm_cr_pr_top_link_1?ie= UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending, accessed 14 December 2011. 96 Pedros “Senna”, review of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 29 September 2008, http:// www.amazon.co.uk/review/R13TZZX94C6QI9/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 14 December 2011. 97 A. I. McCullough, review of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 2 September 2009, http:// www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/1845964160/ref=cm_cr_pr_top_link_1?ie= UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending, accessed 14 December 2011. 98 Molly Van Cleemput, review of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 23 February 2009, http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/1845964160/ref= cm_cr_pr_top_link_ 2?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints= 0&pageNumber=2&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDes cending, accessed 14 December 2011. 99 S. Datta, review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 4 February 2009, http://www.amazon. co.uk/review/R2L97E6MW26T4K/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 14 December 2011. 100 Anonymous review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 22 July 2009, http://www. amazon.co.uk/review/R268ESN8NAF5E7/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 12 December 2011.

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101 Anonymous review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 20 January 2010, http://www. amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0747591156/ref=cm_cr_pr_btm_link_6?ie= UTF 8&showViewpoints=0&pageNumber= 6&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending, accessed 12 December 2011. 102 See, for example, Bond, The Unquiet Western Front; and Sheffield, Forgotten Victory. 103 See, for example, its listing on the Waterstones website, http://www.waterstones. com/waterstonesweb/search/history-and-transport/harry+patch/0/4294965859/, accessed 20 January 2012. 104 This is because the book’s Dewey Decimal classification number categorizes it as a work of ‘History’, rather than a work of literature. 105 Bavidge, ‘The Public Private’, 226. 106 See, for example, William Deresiewicz, ‘An Empty Regard’, New York Times, 20 August 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/opinion/sunday/americassentimental-regard-for-the-military.html?pagewanted=all, accessed 30 May 2013; and Bob Garfield, ‘Veterans Day and a Caution Against the Cult of the Military’, The Guardian, 12 November 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ 2012/nov/12/veterans-day-caution-cult-military, accessed 30 May 2013. 107 Pedros “Senna”, review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 6 October 2008, http://www. amazon.co.uk/review/RX4PNJ94HG3TH/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_2, accessed 12 December 2011. 108 R. Davies, review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 10 February 2008, http://www. amazon.co.uk/review/R1PJ3BI4B1OMJ1/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 12 December 2011. 109 H. R. Donovan, review of The Last Fighting Tommy, 19 October 2009, http://www. amazon.co.uk/review/R2WRG96NQ9NRBR/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 14 December 2011. 110 J. Taylor, review of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 20 July 2009, http://www.amazon. co.uk/review/R3U8JEDXOJP83W/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_1, accessed 14 December 2011. 111 John Hopper, review of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer, 5 August 2009, http://www. amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/1845964837/ref=cm_cr_pr_btm_link_1?ie=U TF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending, accessed 14 December 2011. 112 Val Hennessy, ‘Off to War at 19, Henry Is Still a Survivor at 112’, Daily Mail, 13 November 2007, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1084746/ Off-war-19-Henry-survivor-112-KITCHENER-8217-S-LAST-VOLUNTEERHenry-Allingham.html, accessed 11 January 2012. 113 Leon Watson, ‘Britain’s Last Trench Hero Dies’, Sun, 26 July 2009, http://www. thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/2555135/Britains-lasttrench-hero-dies.html, accessed 11 January 2012.

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Conclusion 1 As the final veterans began to die out, the British media tended to assume that the last veteran would be a man. For a discussion of these assumptions, see Webber and Long, ‘The Last Post’, 280. 2 In August 2013 there were 11,000 Britons alive who had lived through the First World War. See Matthew Rhodes and Sunder Katwala, ‘Why History Matters’, in Jo Tanner (ed.), Do Mention the War: Will 1914 Matter in 2014? (London: British Future, 2013), 2. 3 For a discussion of how family history methods are shaping the contemporary remembrance of the First World War, see James Wallis, ‘ “Great-grandfather, what did you do in the Great War?”: The phenomenon of conducting First World War family history research’, in Bart Ziino (ed.), Remembering the First World War (London: Routledge, 2015), 21–38. 4 Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 5. 5 Todman, The Great War, 195–96. 6 These included an Anglo-French service at the Thiepval memorial in France, a national remembrance service at Manchester Cathedral and an evening concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park. 7 See, for example, John Blake, ‘The First Casualty: Truth’, Times Educational Supplement, 8 November 2013, http://www.tes.co.uk/article. aspx?storyCode=6373287, accessed 10 January 2014; and Boris Johnson, ‘Germany Started the Great War, but the Left Can’t Bear to Say So’, Daily Telegraph, 6 January 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10552336/Germany-started-theGreat-War-but-the-Left-cant-bear-to-say-so.html, accessed 24 August 2016. 8 See, for example, Michael Gove, ‘Why Does the Left Insist on Belittling True British Heroes?’, Daily Mail, 2 January 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article2532930/MICHAEL-GOVE-Why-does-Left-insist-belittling-true-British-heroes. html, accessed 2 January 2014. 9 Rhodes and Katwala, ‘Why History Matters’, 2. 10 See, for example, Kate Williams, The Storms of War (London: Orion, 2015); Simon Tolkien, No Man’s Land (London: Harper Collins, 2016); and Sebastian Faulks, Where My Heart Used to Beat (London: Vintage, 2016). This list is by no means exhaustive. 11 Too many works have been published during the centenary for me to provide a comprehensive list here, and this list of course continues to grow. A browse of the new releases on Amazon’s website illustrates the vast range of works that are being published in this field.

Bibliography Primary sources Archives and collections The Archive of British Publishing and Printing, University of Reading British Library Dust Jackets Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Cambridge Assessment Group Archives, Cambridge Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex The Penguin Archive, University of Bristol Siegfried Sassoon Archive, Cambridge University Library Manuscripts Department Vera Brittain Archive, Somerville College, Oxford Vera Brittain Archive, William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

Newspapers and magazines The Bioscope Birmingham Post The Bookseller Bookseller and Stationery Trades Journal The Bystander The Criterion Daily Express Daily Mirror Daily Telegraph and Morning Post Eastern Daily Press Evening Standard The Guardian Hull Daily Mail John O’London’s Weekly The Listener Manchester Guardian Methodist Times and Leader

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New English Weekly New Statesman and Nation News Chronicle News of the World News Review Nottingham Evening Post Now and Then The Observer Publisher and Bookseller Punch Radio Times Red Tape The Scotsman The Spectator The Sphere Sunday Chronicle Sunday Referee Sunday Telegraph Sunday Times Time and Tide Times Literary Supplement The Times Today-Tomorrow Week-end Review Weekly Scotsman Western Daily Press Western Gazette Western Mail Western Morning News and Mercury Women’s Journal Yorkshire Evening Post Yorkshire Post

Books Aldington, Richard. Death of a Hero. London: Chatto & Windus, 1929. Aldington, Richard. Death of a Hero. 1929; repr., London: Hogarth, 1984. Aldington, Richard. Life for Life’s Sake: A Book of Reminiscences. New York: Viking Press, 1941.

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Patch, Harry and Van Emden, Richard. The Last Fighting Tommy. 2007; repr., London: Bloomsbury, 2008. Powell, Michael and Pressburger, Emeric. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, edited by Ian Christie. London: Faber & Faber, 1994. Raymond, Ernest. Tell England. London: Cassell, 1922. Raymond, Ernest. The Story of My Days: An Autobiography 1888–1922. London: Cassell, 1968. Read, Herbert. In Retreat. London: Hogarth Press, 1925. Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front, translated by A. W. Wheen. London: Putnam, 1929. Sassoon, Siegfried. Sherston’s Progress. London: Faber & Faber, 1936. Sassoon, Siegfried. The Old Century and Seven More Years. London: Faber & Faber, 1938. Sassoon, Siegfried. The Weald of Youth. London: Faber & Faber, 1942. Sassoon, Siegfried. Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920. London: Faber & Faber, 1945. Sassoon, Siegfried. Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920. 1945; repr., London: Right Book Club, 1947. Sassoon, Siegfried. Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. 1928; repr., London: Faber & Faber, 1974. Sassoon, Siegfried. The War Poems, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Faber & Faber, 1983. Sassoon, Siegfried. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. 1930; repr., London: Faber & Faber, 1997. Scannell, Vernon. The Tiger and the Rose: An Autobiography. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971. Scannell, Vernon. Drums of Morning: Growing Up in the Early Thirties. London: Robson, 1992. Sherriff, R. C. Journey’s End. 1929; repr., London: Penguin, 2000. Skull, John (ed.). Conflict and Compassion. London: Hutchinson Educational, 1971. Smith, Helen Zenna. ‘Not So Quiet . . .’ Stepdaughters of War. London: Albert E. Marriott, 1930. Swinnerton, Frank. Authors and the Book Trade. 1932; 2nd edn, London: Hutchinson, 1935. Symons, Julian (ed.). An Anthology of War Poetry. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1942. Tanner, Jo (ed.). Do Mention the War: Will 1914 Matter in 2014? London: British Future, 2013. Theatre Workshop. Oh What a Lovely War. 1963; repr., London: Methuen, 2000. Tomlinson, H. M. All Our Yesterdays. London: William Heinemann, 1930. Unwin, Stanley. The Truth about Publishing. 1926; 3rd edn, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1929. Unwin, Stanley. The Truth about Publishing. 1926; 8th edn, London: Allen & Unwin, 1976. Vanamee, Mary Conger. Vanamee. London: Faber & Faber, 1929.

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Films All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Directed by Lewis Milestone. USA: Universal Pictures. Journey’s End (1930). Directed by James Whale. UK: Welsh Pearson. Tell England (1930). Directed by Anthony Asquith. UK: British Instructional Films. This Happy Breed (1944). Directed by David Lean. UK: Cineguild.

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Websites and email correspondence See individual notes for references to websites used.

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Chapters in books Assmann, Aleida. ‘Canon and Archive’, in Erll and Nünning (eds), Cultural Memory Studies, 97–107. Assmann, Jan. ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, in Erll and Nünning (eds), Cultural Memory Studies, 109–118. Barr, Neil and Sheffield, Gary. ‘Douglas Haig, the Common Soldier and the British Legion’, in Bond and Cave (eds), Haig: A Reappraisal, 223–229. Chartier, Roger. ‘Texts, Printings, Readings’, in Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History, 154–175. Darnton, Robert. ‘What Is the History of Books?’, in Finkelstein and McCleery (eds), The Book History Reader, 9–26. Edwards, Paul. ‘British War Memoirs’, in Sherry (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Great War, 15–33. Gregory, Adrian. ‘British “War Enthusiasm” in 1914: A Reassessment’, in Braybon (ed.), Evidence, History and the Great War, 67–85. Halsey, Katie. “ ‘Something Light to Take My Mind Off the War”: Reading on the Home Front during the Second World War’, in Halsey and Owens (eds), The History of Reading, II, 84–100. Hynes, Samuel. ‘Personal Narratives and Commemoration’, in Winter and Sivan (eds), War and Remembrance, 205–220. Jones, Aled. ‘The British Press, 1919–1945’, in Griffiths (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 47–55. Keiger, John. ‘Crossed Wires, 1904–1919’, in Tombs and Chabal (eds), Britain and France in Two World Wars, 29–46. MacLeod, Kirsten. ‘What People Really Read in 1922: If Winter Comes, the Bestseller in the Annus Mirabilis of Modernism’, in Macdonald and Singer (eds), Transitions in Middlebrow Writing, 14–36. Marcus, Laura. ‘The Great War in Twentieth Century Cinema’, in Sherry (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Great War, 280–301. Marks, Sally. ‘1918 and After: The Postwar Era’, in Martel (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered, 13–37. McKenzie, Don. ‘ “What’s Past Is Prologue”: The Bibliographic Society and History of the Book’, in Making Meaning, McDonald and Suarez (eds), 259–276. McLoughlin, Kate. ‘War and Words’, The Cambridge Companion to War Writing, 15–24. Meyer, Jessica. ‘The Tuition of Manhood: Sapper’s War Stories and the Literature of the War’, in Hammond and Towheed (eds), Publishing in the First Word War, 113–128. Miller, Alisa. ‘Towards a Popular Canon: Education, Young Readers and Authorial Identity in Great Britain between the Wars’, in Towheed and King (eds), Reading and the First World War, 45–60. Paris, Michael. ‘British Feature Films and the First World War, 1919–1997’, The First World War and Popular Cinema, 51–73.

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Journal articles Assmann, Jan and Czaplicka, John. ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, New German Critique 65 (Spring–Summer 1995), 125–133. Bavidge, Eleanor. ‘The Public Private: The Last Veteran’, Journal of War and Culture Studies 2/2 (2009), 225–236. Bourke, Joanna. ‘Introduction – “Remembering” War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 39/4 (2004), 473–485. Briggs, Marlene A. ‘Dis/composing the First World War in Britain: Trauma and Commemoration in the Memory of Harry Patch’, History and Memory 28/1 (2016), 71–109. Confino, Alon. ‘Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method’, The American Historical Review 102/5 (1997), 1386–1403. Eksteins, Modris. ‘All Quiet on the Western Front and the Fate of the War’, Journal of Contemporary History 15/2 (1980), 345–366. Fritschner, Linda Marie. ‘Publishers’ Readers, Publishers, and Their Authors’, Publishing History 7 (1980), 49–80. Gedi, Noah and Elam, Yigal. ‘Collective Memory – What Is It?, History and Memory 8/ 1 (1996), 30–50.

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Gordon, Rebecca. ‘I was Obsessed by a Complex of Terrors and Longings Connected with the Idea “War”: World War I in the Early Writings of Christopher Isherwood’, First World War Studies 2/1 (2011), 121–130. Grieves, Keith. ‘C. E. Montague and the Making of Disenchantment’, War in History, 4/ 1 (1997), 35–59. Hallifax, Stuart. ‘ “Over by Christmas”: British Popular Opinion and the Short War in 1914’, First World War Studies, 1/2 (2010), 103–121. Haslam, Sara. ‘A Literary Intervention: Writing Alcohol in British Literature, 1915– 1930’, First World War Studies 4/2 (2013), 219–239. Isherwood, Ian. ‘The British Publishing Industry and Commercial Memories of the First World War’, War in History 23/3 (2016), 323–340. Jaillant, Lise. ‘Sapper, Hodder and Stoughton, and the Popular Literature of the Great War’, Book History 14 (2011), 137–166. Jones, Edgar. ‘The Psychology of Killing: The Combat Experience of British Soldiers during the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History 41/2 (2006), 229–246. Kansteiner, Wulf. ‘Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies’, History and Theory 41/2 (2002), 179–197. MacCallum-Stewart, Esther. ‘Female Maladies? Reappraising Women’s Popular Literature of the First World War’, Women: A Cultural Review 17/1 (2006), 78–97. Nora, Pierre. ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations 26 (Spring 1989), 7–24. Reeves, Nicholas. ‘Cinema, Spectatorship and Propaganda: Battle of the Somme (1916) and Its Contemporary Audience’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 17/ 1 (1997), 5–28. Roper, Michael. ‘Re-remembering the Soldier Hero: The Psychic and Social Construction of Memory in Personal Narratives of the Great War’, History Workshop Journal 5 (Autumn 2000), 184. Schneider, Thomas F. ‘ “The Truth about the War Finally”. Critics’ Expectations of War Literature during the Weimar Republic: The Reception of Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues [All Quiet on the Western Front], 1928–1930’, Journalism Studies 17/4 (2016), 490–501. Shapiro, Stephen A. ‘The Dark Continent of Literature: Autobiography’, Comparative Literature Studies, 5/4 (1968), 421–454. Smith, Leonard V. ‘Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory: Twenty-Five Years Later’, History and Theory 40/2 (2001), 241–260. Trott, Vincent. ‘Remembering War, Resisting Myth: Veteran Autobiographies and the Great War in the Twenty-First Century’, The Journal of War and Culture Studies 6/4 (2013), 328–342. Webber, Nick and Long, Paul. ‘The Last Post: British Press Representations of Veterans of the Great War’ Media, War and Conflict 7/3 (2014), 273–290. Willis Jr., J. H. ‘The Censored Language of War: Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero and Three Other War Novels of 1929’, Twentieth Century Literature, 45/4 (1999), 467–487.

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Wilson, Nicola. ‘Virginia Woolf, Hugh Walpole, the Hogarth Press, and the Book Society’, English Literary History 79 (2012), 237–260. Winter, J. M. ‘Catastrophe and Culture: Recent Trends in the Historiography of the First World War’, Journal of Modern History 64/3 (1992), 525–532.

Unpublished theses Frayn, Andrew. ‘Writing Disenchantment: The Development of First World War Prose’, PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, 2008. MacCallum-Stewart, Esther. ‘The First World War and Popular Literature’, PhD Thesis, University of Sussex, 2005.

Websites See individual notes for references to websites used. 263 263 263 263

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Index Page numbers in bold refer to Figures. Account Rendered (Brittain) 127, 131, 133–4, 136, 137, 143 review of, 144 Adam, Corinna 171 advertising 6, 19, 22, 24, 30, 35, 41, 46, 47, 48, 58, 93, 95, 96, 108, 109–11 Agate, James 113–14 Albert E. Marriott Ltd 46 Aldington, Richard 35, 48, 58, 85, 86, 87–9, 95, 98, 117, 127, 128–9, 131, 132–3, 136–7, 138, 139–40, 142, 148, 160, 197, 200, 201 Allen & Unwin 16, 18 Allingham, Henry 176, 178–9, 180–1, 182, 183–4, 186, 187–8, 189–91, 194, 195, 202 All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque) 22, 30, 31–2, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 45, 54, 56, 60, 62, 63, 67–8, 69, 75, 78, 82–3, 184, 199–200 Anthology of Modern Verse (Methuen) 57 Anthology of War Poetry 1914–1918 (Nichols) 125 Anthology of War Poetry, An (Symons) 124 Arkell, Reginald 62 Armistice Day 59, 69, 73, 94, 187, 190 Asquith, Anthony 83 Asquith, Herbert 83, 150 Assmann, Aleida 167 Assmann, Jan 8, 203 Auden, W. H. 78, 122 audience, see readers Authors and the Book Trade (Swinnerton) 17 autobiographies and biographies 5, 7, 41, 45, 61, 72, 78–9, 80, 85, 99, 100, 101, 102, 121, 122, 127–8, 142, 143, 144, 149, 155, 166, 168, 170, 176, 177, 179– 80, 184, 185, 187, 195, 197, 198 avant-garde literature 5–6, 16, 41 Baker-Carr, C. D. 72 Baldwin, Stanley 77

Barbusse, Henri 36, 37 Barker, Pat 175 Barnett, Corelli 147 Battle of the Somme, The (film) 80 Bäumer, Paul 32 Bavidge, Eleanor 192, 196 BBC 59, 147, 170, 175, 176, 203, 204 Beaverbrook, Lord 68 Belloc, Hilaire 22 Bennett, Arnold 55, 97 Bentley, Phyllis 107 Bergonzi, Bernard 159, 167 Berry, Paul 144, 170 Big Parade, The (Vidor) 80 Biggles series (Johns) 77–8 Binyon, Laurence 58 Bioscope, The 82, 83 Birdsong (Faulks) 175–6, 204 Blackadder Goes Forth series 202 Blackman, Peter 171 Bloomsbury (publishing house) 177–8 Blunden, Edmund 30, 31, 48, 58, 59, 97–8, 122, 135, 153, 157, 161 blurbs 19, 28, 32, 41, 93–4, 108–9, 128, 142, 169 Bodley Head 15–16 Bond, Brian 2, 148 Book World, The (Hampden) 17 Bookman, The 27 Bookseller, The 13–14, 22, 27, 28, 29, 210n. 4 Borden, Mary 106 Born 1925 (Brittain) 127, 134–5, 137, 145 Bostridge, Mark 144 Bottomley, Gordon 58 Bourdieu, Pierre 5 Bourke, Joanna 122 Bracco, Rosa Maria 4, 62 Bradbury, Malcolm 154 Brass-Hat in No Man’s Land (Crozier) 71 Brentano’s 47 Brereton, Frederick 58, 59

266

266

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Bridgewater Library 120 Brindley, D. J. 165–6 British Legion 70–2, 73 Brittain, Vera 74, 85, 86, 88, 100–7, 112, 113, 115–16, 127, 131–2, 133, 136, 143–5, 148, 166–72, 200, 201–2 Britten, Benjamin 155–7 Brooke, Rupert 24, 56, 58, 114–15, 125, 154, 160, 161 Brophy, John 114 Brown, John 71 Brown, Peter 165 Bystander, The 111 Callil, Carmen 168, 170 Campbell, Bill 179 Cape, Jonathan 16–17 Carrington, Charles 148 Carroll, Sydney 83 Case of Sergeant Grischa, The (Zweig) 30, 56, 68, 90 Cassell 15, 23, 24, 149 Causley, Charles 76 Cavalcade (play) 129 Cecil, Hugh 4 Cecil, Lord David 122 Chartier, Roger 6 Chatto & Windus 16, 28, 29, 46, 59, 61, 89, 90, 93, 95, 109, 154, 155, 157, 160, 164 Chilton, Charles 147 Choules, Claude 202 Churchill, Winton 104, 133 Cineguild 234n. 93 cinema 52, 116, 132, 141, 147, 202, 203–4 and ‘war books boom’ 80–4 Clark, Alan 148 Cobden-Sanderson 30, 214n. 95 Coleman, John 154 collaborators 176, 179–80 Collected Poems (Brooke) 56 Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, The (Day Lewis) 157–8 collective memories 1, 7–10, 14, 36, 76, 84, 94, 123, 127, 146, 151, 176, 199, 200 collective remembrance 9 Collins 58 combat 182–5 Combe Down 188 communicative memory 8, 75, 79, 203 Comradeship (Elvey) 80

Confino, Alon 9 Conflict and Compassion (Skull) 165 Conrad, Joseph 16, 48 ‘Contents’/’Not-Contents’ 51, 66, 84 Counter-Attack (Sassoon) 129 Covici-Friede 89, 90 Coward, Noel 127, 129, 130, 136, 138–9, 140–1 Crick, Andy 192 Crime at Vanderlynden’s, The (Mottram) 28 Criterion, The 54, 58 critical responses and reviews 3–4, 5, 7, 19–20, 24, 28, 30, 35, 51–2, 60–3, 66, 74, 77, 120, 122, 130, 146, 158, 191–7 of Account Rendered 144 of All Quiet on the Western Front 63–4, 66, 67, 69, 82, 83–4 of Born 1925 145 of Death of a Hero 85, 86, 87, 96–100 from educational experts 74 general approval 67–73 of Good-bye to All That 152–3, 172 of Journey’s End 82 of Kitchener’s Last Volunteer 182–3, 192, 194, 196–7 of Last Fighting Tommy, The 192, 193–4, 195 of Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man 61 of Michael’s Wife 143 of Owen’s poetry, 56–9, 123, 124, 154, 156, 158–9, 162 of Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 63 of Siegfried’s Journey 142–3 of Testament of Youth 111–16, 117, 167, 169, 171 of This Happy Breed 143 during war books boom 53–6 Crozier, F. P. 71–2 cultural memory 8, 9, 75, 79, 109, 203 cultural reference memory 8, 167 cultural working memory 8, 167 Daily Express 54, 68, 98, 191, 192 Daily Mail 192, 197 Daily Mirror 54, 55, 69, 189 Darnton, Robert 6 Davies, Peter 40, 90 Day Lewis, Cecil 154–5, 157–8, 160–1 de Groot, Gerard 107 de la Mare, Richard 19

267

Index Death of a Hero (Aldington) 35, 56, 85, 96, 116–17, 128–9, 148, 200 critical responses to 97–100 myth and memory in 86–9 publishing and marketing 89–97 Dell, Ethel M. 98 Deluge, The (Marwick) 168 Disenchantment (Montague) 27, 28 disillusionment 2–3, 4, 28, 32–3, 36, 37, 40, 45, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53, 55, 56, 84, 114, 121, 160, 180, 182 Donkeys, The 148 Doubleday 149 Douglas, Keith 80, 122–3, 126 Doyle, Charles 99 Drums of Morning (Scannell) 75–6 du Maurier, Daphne 108 Duckworth, Gerald 16, 28–9 Dunn, Peter 153 dust jackets 6, 15–16, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 32–3, 33, 34, 36–7, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 44–5, 91, 93, 108, 213n. 60 Edwardian Summer 30, 132 Edwards, Oliver 167 Einhaus, Ann-Marie 4, 47 Eksteins, Modris 75 Elam, Yigal 9 Eliot, T. S. 16, 17, 122, 133 Ellison, Norman F. 75 Elvey, Maurice 80 enlistment 180–2 Ervine, St. John 54, 62, 98, 218n. 24 Evans, Ifor 143, 145 Evening Standard 56, 68, 97 Everyone Sang (Sassoon) 186 Ewart, Wilfrid 25 Eyre & Spottiswoode 47, 48 Faber, Geoffrey 17, 29–30, 40, 46, 108, 142–3 Faber and Faber Ltd. 17, 19, 30, 45, 128 Falls, Cyril 54–5, 63–4, 66, 87, 196 Farewell to Arms, A (Hemingway) 35–6, 45, 64, 65, 91, 163 review of 56 Faulks, Sebastian 175 Fiery Particles (Montague) 79 film adaptations, see cinema First Day on the Somme, The (Middlebrook) 176

267

First World War 1, 129, 153, 161, 187, 204–5, see also specific authors and their works in 1940s literature 127–40 cultural responses 3–4 lessons from 139–40 memory of 6, 49, 60, 119 memory of, future of 202–5 mythology, see mythology post-war pessimism 52–3 transformative effects 3 First World War: An Illustrated History (Taylor) 148 F.n. Doubleday 44 Foch, Marshal 133 Forbidden Zone, The (Borden) 106 Ford, Ford Madox 16, 27, 28–9 Four Years on the Western Front 27 Frankau, Gilbert 21, 22, 24, 45, 98, 127, 130–1, 143 Frayn, Andrew 5, 27 Friede, Donald 89 front cover 22, 39, 178, 213n. 60 Fussell, Paul 3, 119, 134 futility 1, 22–3, 31, 40, 47, 60, 64, 67, 75, 87, 101, 111, 123, 124, 126, 138, 142, 145, 153, 156, 164, 186, 196 Galsworthy, John 48 Gandhi, M. K. 229n. 123 Gardner, Brian 160, 161 Garnett, Edward 14, 17 Gathering Storm, The (Churchill) 133 Gedi, Noa 9 generals 2, 140, 147, 148, 170, 185–6, 201 Genette, Gérard 6, 209n. 34 Ghost Road, The (Barker) 175 Gibbons, Frank 129 Gillett, Eric 111–12 Gollancz, Victor 16, 31, 62, 86, 107–10, 117, 200 Good-bye to All That (Graves) 35, 41–2, 42, 43, 63, 99, 104, 148, 149, 152–3, 163, 186, 201 criticism of 55–6 Goodwin, Dennis 176, 178–9, 183, 184, 186, 195 Gorham, Deborah 107 Gould, Gerald 95, 96–7 G. P. Putnam’s Sons 31

268

268

Index

Grabenhorst, Georg 47 Graham, Desmond 80, 122 Graves, Richard Perceval 149–50 Graves, Robert 35, 41, 61, 63, 122, 148, 149–53, 163, 186, 201 Great Depression 52, 53 Great Short Stories of the War (Minchin) 47, 48 Great War, The, series 176 Great War: Myth and Memory, The (Todman) 147–8 Great War and Modern Memory (Fussell) 119 Greene, Graham 16 Green, Florence 202–3 Gregory, Adrian 181, 187 Grey Arrow Books 166 Grey Dawn, Red Night (Hodson) 62 Guardian, The 83, 154, 159 Guards, Grenadier 82 Haggard, Rider 21, 109 Haig, Douglas 170, 185–6, 191–2, 204, 239n. 99 Halbwachs, Maurice 7–8, 84 Hall, Radclyffe 90 Hallifax, Stuart 140 Halsey, Katie 121 Hamilton, Sir Ian 78 Hampden, John 17 Hampstead Library 121 Harper and Brothers 49 Hemingway, Ernest 17, 35–6, 45, 48, 64, 87, 91 Henry, Frederic 36 Her Privates We (Manning) 35, 37, 39, 40, 64, 90, 148 Herbert, A. P. 24, 83 Heroes’ Twilight (Bergonzi) 167 Hill, Susan 148, 162 Hirsch, Marianne 203 Hoare, Philip 129, 142 Hodder and Stoughton 15, 19, 26–7, 36 Hodgson, William Noel 126 Hodson, James Lansdale 62 Hollywood 80, 224n. 176 Holmes, Richard 2 Holtby, Winifred 108 house catalogues 19 House of Macmillan 15 Howard, G. Wren 17

Hull Daily Mail 69 Huntington, Constant 31 Hutchinson, A. S. M. 25–7 Hutchinson and Company 15, 22–3, 44 Hynes, Samuel 1, 3–4, 9, 13, 22, 52, 122 If Winter Comes (Hutchinson) 25–7, 26 Im Westen Nichts Neues (Remarque) 31 Images of War (Aldington) 91 ‘imaginative silence’ 13, 14, 22, 24, 49 In Flanders Fields (Wolff ) 148 Independent on Sunday 192 Inge, W. R. 56, 218n. 30 interwar years 51–2 marketing 21–7 marketplace 40–9 publishing industry 15–21 ‘war books boom’ 27–40 Isherwood, Christopher 78–9, 154, 158, 223nn. 153, 154 Isherwood, Ian 210n. 6 It’s a Great War (Lee) 106 Jaillant, Lise 36 James, P. D. 169 Jameson, Storm 112 Jerrold, Douglas 47, 63, 64–6, 69, 196, 216n. 148 J. M. Dent 15, 21, 36 John O’London’s Weekly 145 Johns, W. E. 77–8 Jolliffe, H. A. 116 Jonathan Cape Ltd 16, 34, 35–6, 41, 71, 108 Jones, H. A. 69–70 Journey from Obscurity (Harold Owen) 155, 163 Journey’s End (film) 81, 82 Journey’s End (play) 31, 35, 53–4, 56, 68 Joyce, James 16 Jünger, Ernst 61 Keable, Robert 25 Kipling, Rudyard 15 Kitchener’s Last Volunteer (Allingham and Goodwin) 176, 179, 182–3, 190, 192, 194, 196–7 Laemmle, Carl 82 Laemmle, Carl, Jr. 82 Land and Water (Belloc) 22

269

Index Lane, Allen 124 Lane, John 14, 15, 21 Last Fighting Tommy, The (Patch and Van Emden) 176, 177, 184, 192–4, 195 Lawrence, D. H. 16 Lawrence, T. E. 121 League of Nations Union (LNU) 112 Lee, Mary 106 Leighton, Roland 170 Lejeune, C. A. 141 libraries 7, 18, 20, 67–8, 76, 83, 98–9, 120–1, 195–6 Liddle, Peter 240n. 10 Lie about the War (Jerrold) 63, 64 Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (film) 132 Life for Life’s Sake (Aldington) 127, 128, 131, 132–3, 142 Light (Barbusse) 36 Lions and Shadows (Isherwood) 78–9 Listener, The 59, 122, 171 literary war 1–2 Littlewood, Joan 147 London Mercury 111 ‘lost generation, the’ 3, 87, 95, 103–5, 107, 111, 117, 171, 193, 201 Lye, Len 41 Lyn, Macdonald 176 McArthur, Charles 43–4, 45 MacCallum-Stewart, Esther 149, 150 Macdonald 143, 235n. 104 MacDonald, Ramsey 52 MacDonald, T. T. 235n. 93 MacKenzie, Peter 179 MacLeod, Kirsten 26 Macmillan, Frederick 15 Macmillan, Harold 15, 104, 145 Macmillan New York 103, 107, 134, 143–4, 145 Mademoiselle from Armentières (Elvey) 80 Mail on Sunday 197 Man Alive! A Book of Verse for Boys (Brown) 165 Man Could Stand Up–, A (Ford) 28 Manchester Guardian 54, 56, 57, 59, 73, 97, 111, 141, 144 Manning, Frederic 35, 37, 38–40, 90, 148 Mann, William 156–7 Marcus, Laura 80 marketing 18–19, 21–7, 32, 36, 89–97

269

marketplace 13, 20, 40–9, 200 Marriott, Albert 46–7 Martin Secker 17, 30 Marwick, Arthur 3, 168 Masefield, John 161 Mass Observation 7, 121 Maxse, Ivor 72 McKenna, Stephen 28 McKenzie, Don 6 McLoughlin, Kate 182–3 McNeile, H. C. 27, 36–7, 48, 182 Megroz, R. L. 59 Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (Sassoon) 30, 61, 69, 74, 105 Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (Sassoon) 30, 35, 138 memory 7–8, 9–10, 151–2, 186–8 collective memories 1, 7–10, 14, 36, 76, 84, 94, 123, 127, 146, 151, 176, 199, 200 communicative memory 8, 75, 79, 203 cultural memory 8, 9, 75, 79, 109, 203 modern memories 188–91 personal memories 9, 10, 74, 149, 151, 176, 180, 186, 191, 204 memory boom 176 Men Who March Away, The (Parsons) 160, 164 Methodist Times and Leader 112 Methuen, Algernon 16, 57 Methuen & Company 16, 24, 160 Meyer, Jessica 65 Michael’s Wife (Frankau) 127, 130–1, 143 Middle Parts of Fortune, The (Manning) 38 Middlebrook, Martin 176 middlebrow literature 15, 27, 40 marketing of 21–7 Milestone, Lewis 82 Miller, Alisa 76 Minchin, H. C. 47 Modern English Poetry: 1882–1932 (Megroz) 59 modern memories 188–91 modernism, and war writing 6 Montague, C. E. 27, 28, 79 Morpurgo, Michael 204 Mosse, George 78, 79 Mottram, R. H. 27, 28 Mr. Britling Sees It Through (Wells) 56

270

270

Index

myth-making 9–10 mythology 1–5, 9–10, 86–9, 100–7, 184, 201 Net Book Agreement (1899) 15 New English Weekly 111 New Reading Public 20 New Statesman and Nation 111, 112, 142 News Review 145 News of the World 191, 194 Newton, Nigel 177 Nichols, Robert 125–6, 232n. 33 Nicholson, Harold 143 Nora, Pierre 8 Norrie, Ian 16 North Athenaeum Library 121 ‘Not-Contents’/’Contents’ 51, 66, 84 Not So Quiet on the Western Front (Remarks) 46 Not So Quiet . . . Stepdaughters of War (Smith) 46, 106 Now and Then 33–4 Observer, The 59, 95, 97, 109, 141, 143, 144, 191 Oh, What a Lovely War! (Chilton) 147 Oliver, Michael 156 Orwell, George 79–80, 158 Over 21, 169 Owen, Harold 155, 163 Owen, Wilfred 22, 28, 56–7, 56–60, 70, 78, 79, 82, 122–3, 125, 126, 153–66, 171, 175, 181, 186, 189, 200, 201, 204 Oxford Book of Modern Verse, The (Yeats) 59 pacifism 122, 222n. 141, 229n. 123 Parade’s End (Ford) 27, 28, 204 paratexts 6 Paris, Michael 78, 81, 84 Parker, Peter 191 Parsons, Ian 59, 80, 157, 160, 161, 164, 219n. 58 Passos, John Dos 45 Passchendaele, Battle of 2, 170, 176, 177, 178, 183, 186, 189, 191, 193 Patch, Harry 176, 177–8, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191–2, 193, 195, 196, 202 patriotism 31, 56, 65, 69, 83, 88, 114, 125, 141–2, 163, 181, 182 Peace Pledge Union 112

Pelican imprint 124 Penguin Books 124, 166 personal memories 9, 10, 74, 149, 151, 176, 180, 186, 191, 204 pessimism, post-war 52–3 Peter Davies Ltd 17, 38 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant (Frankau) 21, 22, 23, 27, 29, 63, 131 Piazza Press 38 Poems of To-day 57 Poems of Wilfred Owen, The (Blunden) 58 poetry 5, 17, 62, 122–5, 155, see also Aldington, Richard; Douglas, Keith; Owen, Wilfred; Sassoon, Siegfried Popkin, Jeremy 102 popular literature 5, 62 Post-Mortem (play) 129 post-war memories, see memories Potter, Jane 4, 208n. 23 Powell, Dilys 58, 59 Powell, Jonathan 170 Powell and Pressburger 132 Prentice, Charles 16, 86, 89, 90–3, 95, 98, 117 Press and Journal 143 Price, Evadne 46–7, 106 Progress of Poetry, The (Parsons) 59, 80 Public Libraries Act of 1919 20 public school education 79–80 Publisher and Bookseller 30–1, 35, 40–1, 48, 75, 108, 210n. 4 publishers/publishing industry 6, 9, 14, 15–16, 49, 149, 199–200, 208n. 28, 210n. 5, 211n. 12 challenges 20–1 in interwar years 15–21 marketing and promotion of books 18–19, 21–7, 32, 36, 89–97 motivations for publishing 17–18 Pugh, Martin 52 Punch 22 Putnam 32–4 Radio Times 171 Random House 175 Rathbone, Irene 106 Raymond, Ernest 23–4, 120 Raymond, Harold 16 Read, Herbert 14, 54, 55, 60, 66

271

Index readers 9, 17, 20–1, 49, 53, 99, 113–15, 116, 119–21, 124, 195–8, 199, 200, 201, 205 interpretation of texts 6–7, 194 responses, see critical responses and reviews veterans 68–73 young readers 73–80, 117, 153 Reeves, James 159 Regeneration trilogy (Barker) 175–6 Remarque, Erich Maria 22, 30, 31–2, 46, 48, 53, 54, 99, 201 Reynolds, David 2, 60, 112 Rickword, Edgell 126 Ricœur, Paul 180 Roads to Glory (Aldington) 99 Roper, Michael 180 Rose, Jonathan 7 Rosenberg, Isaac 1, 58–9, 125, 160, 161 Sapper, see McNeile, H. C. Sassoon, Siegfried 28, 30, 35, 57, 59, 60–1, 69, 74, 88, 127–8, 132, 135–6, 138, 140, 142, 143, 150, 160, 161, 170, 185, 186, 214n. 82 Sayers, Dorothy L. 108 Scannell, Vernon 75, 122 school examinations, Owen’s poetry in 162–4 Scotsman, The 112, 141 seasonal lists 19 Second World War 4, 78, 119–20, 152–3, 161, 201 books published during, responses to 140–5 books read during 120–7, see also specific authors and their works Secret Battle, The (Herbert) 24 Selected Poems (Sassoon) 57 Self Portrait: A Novel of His Own Life (Frankau) 130 serialization 68 Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Lawrence) 121, 230n. 10 Shapiro, Stephen 5 Sharp, Alan 137 Shaw, Margaret R. B. 111 Sheffield, Gary 2, 60, 137, 176, 207n. 9 shell shock 131–2 Sherriff, R. C. 31, 81–2, 163 Sidgwick and Jackson 57, 218n. 38 Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920 (Sassoon) 127–8, 132, 135, 138, 140, 142–3

271

Simon Called Peter (Keable) 25 Sitwell, Edith 214n. 82 Sitwell, Osbert 16 Sivan, Emmanuel 9 Skull, John 165 Smith, Angela K. 4, 5, 32, 208n. 23 Smith, Helen Zenna, see Price, Evadne Soldier from the Wars Returning (Carrington) 148 Somme, Battle of 2, 21, 38, 40, 80, 101, 160, 161, 171, 176, 189, 192 Spanish Farm trilogy (Mottram) 27, 28 Spectator, The 73, 171 Spender, Stephen 78 Sphere, The 145 Spielberg, Stephen 204 Squad (Wharton) 35, 36 Squire, J. C. 62–3, 66, 97, 220n. 73 Stallworthy, Jon 26, 65, 231nn. 20, 26 Stein, Gertrude 87 Stewart, Victoria 127 Storm of Steel [In Stahlgewittern] (Jünger) 61 Strange Meeting (Hill) 148, 162 Strauss, Ralph 97 subscription libraries Smiths 20 Boots 20 Sun 192, 197 Sun Also Rises, The (Hemingway) 87 Sunday Chronicle 113, 114 Sunday Graphic 142 Sunday Telegraph 159 Sunday Times, The 56, 58, 59, 83, 97, 112, 147, 148, 154, 161 Swinnerton, Frank 17, 18, 19, 20, 95 Symons, Julian 124–5, 231n. 27 Tate, Trudi 5 Taylor, A. J. P. 137, 148 Taylor, W. G. 17, 20 television adaptations 148, 167, 170, 171–2, 176, 202, 203–4 Tell England (Raymond) 23–4, 25, 27, 83–4, 120 Tennyson, Julian 125 Terraine, John 147, 167, 207n. 9 Testament of Youth (Brittain) 74, 85, 86, 110, 116–17, 133, 134, 148, 166, 167, 186, 188, 200, 201–2

272

272 critical responses to 111–16 Gollancz and 107–10 myth and memory in 100–7 television adaptation of 170, 171–2, 204 T. Fisher Unwin 212n. 36 Thacker, Toby 4 They Called It Passchendaele (Macdonald) 176 This Happy Breed (play) (Coward) 127, 129–30, 136, 138–9 film adaptation 141–2, 143 Thomas, Edward 125 Thomson, Alistair 180 Three Soldiers (Passos) 45 Tiger and the Rose, The (Scannell) 122 Time and Tide 143 Times, The 22, 24, 54, 72, 73, 83–4, 124, 167, 169, 191 TLS 54, 122, 144, 152, 154, 158, 162, 167, 169 Todman, Dan 4, 148–9, 156, 177, 230n. 4 Tomlinson, H. M. 58, 66, 219n. 46 To-morrow and To-morrow (McKenna) 28 Toomey, Philippa 169–70 Towndrow, Romney 38 trench warfare 1, 2, 27, 41, 54, 67, 74, 76, 79, 81–2, 83, 87–8, 94, 95, 97, 100, 101, 108, 113, 117, 123, 127–8, 135, 148, 152, 156, 167, 168, 170–1, 175, 177, 178–9, 183–5, 188, 191–4, 197, 204 Trout, Stephen 10, 45 Truth about Publishing, The (Unwin) 17 Turning World, The (Brindley) 165 Under Fire (Barbusse) 36, 37, 38 Undertones of War (Blunden) 30, 31, 56, 64, 97–8 Universal Pictures 82 Unwin, Stanley 16, 17, 19, 21 Up the Line to Death: The War Poets 1914–1918 (Gardner) 160 Upton, Emory 71 Van Emden, Richard 176, 177, 178, 183, 185, 186, 187, 195 Vanamee (Vanamee) 45–6 Vanamee, Mary Conger 45 Venner, Norman 73

Index veterans 175–98, 200 organizations, responses to war books 70–3 Veterans (documentary) 177 Victor Gollancz Ltd. 16, 18, 85 Vidor, King 80 Viking Press 128, 175 Virago 167–8 Wall Street Crash 53 Walpole, Hugh 15, 98 War Books (Falls) 63 ‘war books boom’ 30–40, 51, 53, 77, 121, 127, 145, 148, 200, 205 anticipation of 27–30 and cinema 80–4 early critical responses during 53–6 war books controversy 51 War Bugs (MacArthur) 43–4 War Horse (Morpurgo) 204 War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, The 76 War Requiem (Britten) 155–7, 166 Ward, A. C. 51, 66–7 Watson, Janet 4, 5, 51, 102, 113, 115 Watt, A. P. 21 Waugh, Evelyn 73–4 Way of Revelation (Ewart) 25 We That Were Young (Rathbone) 106 Week-end Review 72, 74, 77, 111 Weekly Scotsman 152–3 Well of Loneliness, The (Hall) 90–1 Welland, D. S. R. 154 Wellesley, Dorothy 59 Wells, H. G. 16 Westminster Abbey 166, 188 Whale, James 81 Wharton, Edith 48 Wharton, James B. 35 What Price Glory? (film) 81 Whitehouse, J. Howard 74 Widdowson, Peter 5 Wilfred Owen: A Critical Study (Wellland) 154 William Heinemann 58, 141 Williams, Orlo 56 Williams, Shirley 169, 170, 239n. 90 Willis, J. H., Jr. 90, 91 Wilson, Jean Moorcroft 143

273

Index Wilson, Nicola 98 Wilson, Ross 193 Winged Victory (Yeates) 122, 178 Wings (film) 81 Winter, Jay 9, 10, 104, 166, 176 Winterbourne, George 86, 97 Wodehouse, P. G. 98 Wohl, Robert 104 Wolff, Leon 148

Women’s Journal 114 ‘World War One fever’ 147–8 Yeates, V. M. 122, 178 Yeats, W. B. 59 Yorkshire Post 153 Zero Hour (Grabenhorst) 47 Zweig, Arnold 30, 53, 90, 120

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