Reviews

Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends by Mark Bostridge, Alan Bishop

krpollard's review against another edition

4.0

This was a hard collection to get started with, but pretty soon I was hooked on the narrative of Vera and her friends. Of course I knew what would happen from the beginning -- this is history, after all -- but reading about how each soldier faced his death in his own words and how Vera handled the news was fascinating as well as heartbreaking. Perhaps it's our natural human curiosity about death, but I kept imagining what I would do in her shoes, and part of me still can't fathom the personal costs of WWI.

circularcubes's review against another edition

4.0

I feel wrung out after finishing this extraordinary collection of letters. I've read both Testament of Youth and Chronicle of Youth, but I wanted to explore more of this story. There's nothing like reading actual, first-person accounts of the men and women who served in the Great War. To imagine the conditions of the trenches and dugouts that these men wrote from is simply astounding. And there is nothing more chilling than a sudden stop to the letters. Vera writes often about the agonizing delay in letters, the horror of writing a letter to someone who has already, unbeknownst to you, passed from this life. This collection does an admirable job of bringing the reader immediately into the lives of those involved in WWI, but particularly does a fantastic job of filling in the lives of Geoffrey Thurlow and Victor Richardson, and contextualizing just how important their relationships were to Vera and Edward Brittain. It's touching to see their correspondence with Vera grow with their first written exchanges to each other - and all the more heartbreaking when those letters stop.

emma_poli's review against another edition

5.0

Reading these letters that immortalised the heartbreak of a generation was a haunting experience.

bev_reads_mysteries's review against another edition

4.0

This is one of the eras I'm most interested in. These letters make you feel like you were there.

othervee's review against another edition

4.0

A really interesting read for anyone who's read 'Testament of Youth' and wants to learn more about the conjunctions of these five young people flung into a world that nothing could prepare them for. The contrast in the letters and what it reveals about their characters is fascinating, from the very exploratory, didactic, only occasionally playful nature of Vera's own letters, which are very like her brother Edward's and also her fiance's, to Victor's which are very considerate and thoughtful if a little ponderous, and Geoffrey's which are a little slapdash and punctuated by constant exclamations of "Well!"

I am intrigued by the fact that *all* of them refer to Vera's fiance, Roland Leighton, after his death by capitalising his pronouns - talking about what He would have done and His things and how they feel about Him. He must have been a very extraordinary young man with a powerful and charismatic personality - or were his friends and fiancee all in need of a leader?

At the end of this I found myself wishing that we'd had the opportunity to see what all the young men involved would have thought and felt about the war in later life, not just Vera; but of course this is real, not a novel, and none of them lived to have that opportunity.

emilypfarrow's review

informative sad slow-paced

4.0

Read for a university essay - very informative and provided an easily traceable timeline of Vera Brittain and her friends throughout the first world war. My only criticism would be that the letters aren't included in their whole, and that there is somewhat of a lacking focus upon Vera in comparison to the men, however I understand the reasoning behind these exclusions.

aemsea26's review

4.0

This covers a lot of the same ground as Testament of Youth but it is so devastating.