UKC

Just finished watching this on iplayer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06j49gb/testament-of-youth

To say I found it moving would be a gross understatement. Likewise to say I was welling up on numerous occasions. In reality I'm not ashamed to admit that I was blubbing uncontrollably at the utter waste of life, hope, passion and opportunity.

I haven't been keeping up with contemporary films for quite a while so I'd had no preconceptions. I looked on IMDB just now to find it's unsurprisingly received loads of stunningly good reviews, but also a surprising number of pretty terrible ones too. I can only presume the latter reviewers have too many sources of comparison to cloud their vision, or have read or seen too many related things, such that their eyes are viewing through the prism of intellect or cinematographic technique rather than emotion. Maybe it's just an emotional state I find myself in that leads me to be more susceptible than usual to heartstring pulling. I have indeed been away from home for quite a while and am sorely missing family. I hope it isn't just that though. In any case, the feeling is just as real.

I'm not posting this in the hope of a discussion. I'm happy with the wonderful feeling the film left me with. I'm posting in case anyone else may benefit from the tip-off.

I remember visiting Roland Leighton’s grave on an A-level English trip nearly twenty years ago and being really affected by the inscription, which has stuck with me all these years:

Goodnight, though life and all take flight, never goodbye. 

I watched this a few weeks back - the wastage of war should be enough to make anybody weep   - great film

The book is even better. 

So many women lost the men in their lives in the Great War, and fate was unbelievably cruel to Vera yet she rose above it dedicating herself to her nursing and ambulance driving. An incredible history of triumph over tragedy and beautifully written.

My Grandmother was of that generation, and when I was a boy and the sending and receiving of  telegrams was a normal part of life, I still remember the dread she showed some 30 years after that war had finished whenever a telegram was brought to our house. I remember asking my Mum why, and she explained that Granny had had a brother killed in the Great War.  

Did you know that Vera Brittain was the MP, Shirley Williams' Mother?

Another really good book is "The Roses of No Man's Land" by Lyn Macdonald. It's about the Nurses and VAD girls of the Great War. "On the face of it, no one could have been less equipped for the job than these gently nurtured girls who walked straight out of Edwardian drawing rooms into the manifest horrors of the First World War...."

Knowing that their names appeared on the memorial at the entrance to the school library made it very poignant for me.

Good to see the Lyn Macdonald book being promoted. I participated in a local history project undertaken in my college and was amazed to find the varied stories of these young women in the VAD: one on the Brittanic, another on a hospital ship torpedoed off Alexandria, another in Petrograd in 1917 - truly remarkable women.

This thread confused me for a moment because when I clicked on it, I was thinking of UKC's Statement of Youth. Rather different films!

Thank you for flagging this up, I didn’t see it at the time (it was one of approximately eight Alicia Vikander films released that year and it was hard to keep up) but I will catch up soon