The Great War
and Modern Memory

Old Duffer's Book Corner

Reviewed by Charles Vasey

Paul Fussell for OUP

This is one of those standards that I missed but acquired in sales. This has very little overtly military content apart from some half-baked criticisms of Haig, but it is a marvellous study of an army through its literary members. Blunden, Owen, Sassoon and Graves all pop up and are analysed (along with less literary diarists or authors) for their part in the literary traditions of England. En route, the author demonstrates not only a powerful grip of English themes (no dreadful Scots here thank you) such a gardening, homo-eroticism, and dawns and sunsets, but how these tastes differed from those of the Second War and from those of Americans. One is left with an interesting view of literary Englishness. However, and it is a big however, one cannot in truth see this literary view going quite as widely as the text would indicate. I cannot imagine large-boned fox-hunting fellows like my own grandfather engaging in quite the prosing indicated here, and their attentions seem more directed towards the French women than their men. But being functionally illiterate their view is lost, except to the degree it was made flesh (with those French women).

Old Duffer's Book Corner Book Reviews

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