Herbert Read Loses His Oliver; Siegfried Sassoon Closes a Book and Remembers...
A grim day, today, and a reminder that we rarely read the writings of those who suffer the most. Never the dead, and rarely the maimed. But our first victim is, as of yet, only missing. We’ve read...
View ArticleSiegfried Sassoon on Nightingales and Drunkards; Diana Manners on Madness and...
We’ll continue, today, with two of yesterday’s writers. Siegfried Sassoon is now on his way from the south of France to the north–back, that is, to the Western Front. May 10 11 p.m. …The other...
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C.E. Montague Returns to Amiens; Diana Manners and Duff Cooper Write to Each...
Damage to Notre-Dame d’Amiens, 1918: the side-chapel Soon after the German advance began, C.E. Montague, part of an intelligence unit who looked after the British Press Corps, evacuated Amiens with his...
View ArticleSiegfried Sassoon Confounded by the Familiar, From the Nightingales to the...
The emphasis, lately, has been on the sudden change in the British experience of the war wrought by the German offensive at the end of March. But there are two components to this historiographic turn....
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Duff Cooper Visits a Cathedral, and a Provokes a Very Long Excursus on...
The tomb of Louis de Brézé, Rouen Cathedral Duff Cooper is going sight-seeing in Rouen, with his beloved Diana beside him–in his imagination, at least. …I went almost with you to the churches we wanted...
View ArticleIs Siegfried Sassoon a Good Chap, or Only Rather a Humbug? Cynthia Asquith...
Siegfried Sassoon has pledged himself to slowing down and simplifying: he will focus on his men, and think about nothing but the “groove” that an infantry subaltern finds himself in. This sounds rather...
View ArticleSiegfried Sassoon is Working Up to a Climax; Wilfred Owen is Working for the...
Apologies in advance for the long post: this is one of those days on which a whole host of our regulars provide a sharp insight or a significant update. Siegfried Sassoon, at least, takes it easy on...
View ArticleDuff Cooper Hearkens to the Larks; Siegfried Sassoon Doesn’t Forget the Base...
While Sidney Rogerson continues to fall back, doing what he can to aid in the (re)organization of the British retreat,[1] most of our other officers remain in the traditionally British parts of the...
View ArticleDuff Cooper and Diana Manners Wish Upon a Star; Vera Brittain Queries...
Duff Cooper is a somewhat ingenuous diary-writer, and, in his poor-little-privileged-boy way, something of a naif, always being caught out by those treacherous foes champagne and pretty women and...
View ArticleSiegfried Sassoon in the Trenches Once Again: Olaf Stapledon in the Slimiest,...
Well, folks, Siegfried Sassoon is back. He is in trenches in France for the first time in a year–very close, in fact, to his last behind-the-lines billet of April 1917, just before his wounding in the...
View ArticleSalter Clark Gets a Bit Suspicious; Olaf Stapledon Between Humor and Tragedy;...
Salter Clark, innocent American abroad, writes home to his parents today, a century back–of his innocence, and growing experience. June 3, 1918. I am still in the signal school, and enjoy it very much…...
View ArticleOlaf Stapledon Hunts Cherries and Watches a Near Miss; Salter Clark Declines...
We’ll start, today, with Salter Clark, an American near Paris. Well, not that near… June 30 1918 I actually feel rather ashamed at having so much money. In the same shops I buy things, there may be a...
View ArticleJack Martin in the Worst Billet in Belgium; Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller...
If war literature is about the highs and the lows, well, we have an excellent pairing here, today. Not in the sense of brutality or suffering on the one hand and heroism or altruism on the other, but...
View ArticleA Second Pitch from Duff Cooper, and a First from George V
Duff Cooper and Diana Manners have only been separated for a bit over two months, but this has been quite long enough to steel Duff’s resolve–and fire up his passions to the smoking point of proposal...
View ArticleCynthia Asquith’s Beb is Safe and Sound, Olaf Stapledon’s Reality of War is...
Just two updates, today, the first from Olaf Stapledon, who, for once–and rather sheepishly–takes a selfish interest in his own work. Not with the ambulance, but with the book he has been working on...
View ArticleDiana Manners and Thomas Hardy Give Good Reviews to Duff Cooper and Siegfried...
Diana Manners has just received a most weighty missive. Rutland Hospital July 8 Such a wonderful letter this morning about our marrying. It was my cure, my wings. I feel it may be so. I know I cannot...
View ArticleVivian de Sola Pinto Fights on Alone; Olaf Stapledon Lovingly Itemizes...
As Siegfried Sassoon is wafted rear-ward in the gentle clutches of the medical evacuation system, protesting all the way (“it’s only a flesh wound!”), Vivian de Sola Pinto was left to sort out the...
View ArticleSeveral Greek Islands in a Storm: Duff Cooper and Carroll Carstairs Together...
Three very different updates, today: a bubbly friendship, a bolt from the blue, and back to bed. First, a recondite crossing of paths. Duff Cooper is still in France, still safe in the rear, and still...
View ArticleOlaf Stapledon Begs Forgiveness; Duff Cooper Goes Up, and Runs Down
Sometimes the double restriction military and social decorum–the need, that is, not to write too incautiously of military matters as well as the desire not to alarm loved ones–make it very difficult...
View ArticleWilfred Owen Hears of Siegfried Sassoon, and The Calls for Himself; Duff...
The news of Siegfried Sassoon’s wounding spread very fast–to Wales in only a few days, to pretty much everyone in London soon after, and now to far-off Scarborough. Wilfred Owen writes to his mother of...
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