To coincide with the release of the major motion picture, Testament of Youth, Bloomsbury has published VERA BRITTAIN and the FIRST WORLD WAR by Mark Bostridge.

Subtitled The Story of Testament of Youth, this is a fascinating re-examining of the woman who penned one of the great literary works to come out of the Great War.

Bostridge is Brittain’s biographer and also the bestselling author of Letters from a Lost Generation, Florence Nightingale: The Woman and her Legend, and The Fateful Year: England 1914. He has become something of an authority on strong women and the period prior to and during World War One.

In this book, Bostridge presents, in concise form, the outline of Vera Brittain’s First World War experiences, alongside chapters about the writing of her book Testament of Youth, its first publication, its re-emergence, and its translation to television, dance, and finally, this year, to the big screen.

This new book draws on material about the complex evolution of Testament of Youth that was unavailable twenty years ago when Bostridge and his collaborator Paul Berry produced the standard full length biography.

Bostridge provides details of that unlikely but ultimately successful collaboration, along with a revelation about the biographical mystery surrounding  Vera’s much loved brother Edward Brittain’s last days.

Vera’s masterpiece  had a long and arduous gestation, finally published in its fulsomeness in 1933.

Within nine months of its publication, Hollywood came knocking. Vera was hesitant at opening the door for fear of how it eschew the anonymity that some of the characters worked so hard to preserve, and the offer lapsed.

Forty five years on, thanks largely to the reprinting of the book through Virago Press, the BBC finally produced a television version.
That inspired choreographer Kenneth Macmillan to create Gloria, a one act ballet.

Still it was to take another thirty five years for the film to come to fruition under the auspices of BBC films and Heyday Productions, producers of the Harry Potter franchise.

Saiorse Ronan was attached to play Vera but scheduling problems had her replaced by Alicia Vikander.

Bostridge visited the set as literary executor and has some interesting insights about the filming of the project.

Vera Brittain and the First World War should serve as an initial port of call for those coming to this exceptional woman for the first time, perhaps as a result of seeing the film, and stimulate a whole new generation to discover Testament of Youth.

Vera always hoped that her work would remind readers of the extent of that despair which wasted so much youthful vitality and darkened the sunshine of the sweet years. We need more works like this to stop the militarists and the sceptics in their tracks, hopefully leaving no-one left who will be willing to condemn another generation to endure what this one so painfully did.