Has anybody else ever read Vera Brittain's book, Testament of Youth? She was born into an upper middle class family - her father owned a factory, that sort of level - in 1896, in central England, and was expected to marry and procreate and be a good little woman. She decided not to do that instead she taught herself at WEA classes, and with the help of a tutor she met there, and of whom her parents approved; she passed the interview and the examinations to go to Oxford University, via an exhibition scholarship to Somerville College. She attended in 1914, on her own, for she had expected her brother, Edward, and his friend Roland to attend also. Both of them joined up instead, and her experience was overshadowed during the academic year 1914-1915 by the war, although the peak horrors had not yet been reached. She took leave of absence from the University to become a VAD Nurse - she worked as a nurse for almost the rest of the war (she took a short break to care for her parents), working in London, in Malta, and in France. At one stage, she was assigned to look after wounded German prisoners during the push to recover lost territory. Her brother and his friend both died. Roland had become her fiance, and he died while she was expecting him home for a Christmas leave. She offered herself in marriage to another friend of theirs, Victor, as he had been blinded in the war, but Victor also died from his wounds. A fourth friend, Geoffrey, suffered the same fate. Her experiences left her traumatised, even though in 1919 she returned to Oxford to complete her studies. As a writer during the 1920s, she struggled to find her voice, and eventually did find it with her first autobiography, which was published in 1933. I first read her book many years ago - I see my copy of it is dated Monday 14 January 1980! There was a tv series that dramatised it, and I see the book and the DVD are both available on places like Amazon. Its a powerful, straightforward autobiography, and I strongly recommend it
