Vera Brittain

Infobox Writer
name =Vera Brittain


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birthdate =29 December 1893
birthplace =Newcastle Under Lyme
deathdate =29 March 1970
deathplace =Wimbledon
occupation = Writer, author, journalist
nationality = British
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genre = Feminism, pacifism
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notableworks = Testament of Youth
spouse = George Catlin
partner =
children = John Brittain-Catlin, Shirley Williams
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Vera Mary Brittain (29 December 1893 – 29 March 1970) was an English writer, feminist and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir "Testament of Youth," recounting her experiences during World War I and the growth of her ideology of Christian pacifism.

Life

Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Brittain was the daughter of a well-to-do family, which owned a paper mill in Hanley. She had an uneventful childhood with her only brother her closest companion. At 18 months her family moved to Macclesfield, Cheshire and when she was 11 they moved again, to Buxton in Derbyshire. From the age of thirteen she attended boarding school at St Monica's, Kingswood in Surrey where her aunt was a principal. After studying Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, she delayed her degree after one year in 1915 in order to work as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D.) nurse for much of the First World War. Her fiancé, Roland Leighton, her brother Edward Brittain, and many of their closest friends were killed during the war. Their letters to each other are documented in the book "Letters From A Lost Generation".

Returning to Oxford after the war to complete her degree, Vera found it difficult to adjust to peacetime. It was at this time she met Winifred Holtby, a close friendship developed with both aspiring to become established on the London literary scene, and the bond developed between them until Holtby's untimely death in 1935.

In 1925 Brittain married George Catlin, a political scientist and philosopher. Their son, John Brittain-Catlin (1927-1987), an artist painter, businessman, and the author of the autobiography "Family Quartet", which appeared in 1987. Their daughter, born 1930, is the former Labour Cabinet Minister, now Liberal Democrat peer, Shirley Williams.

Brittain's first published novel was "The Dark Tide" (1923). It was not until 1933 that she published "Testament of Youth", which would be followed by the sequels, "Testament of Friendship" (1940) – her tribute to and biography of Winifred Holtby – and "Testament of Experience" (1957), the continuation of her own story, which spanned the years between 1925 and 1950. Vera Brittain wrote from the heart and based many of her novels on actual experiences and actual people. In this regard her novel, "Honourable Estate" (1936) was in places more of a memoir.

In the 1920s she became an regular speaker on behalf of the League of Nations Union, but in June 1936 she was invited to speak at a peace rally in Dorchester, where she shared a platform with Dick Sheppard, George Lansbury, Laurence Housman and Donald Soper. Afterwards Sheppard invited her to join the Peace Pledge Union, and following six months careful reflection she replied in January 1937 to say she would. Later that year Vera also joined the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship. Her newly found pacifism came to the fore during World War II, when she began the series of "Letters to Peacelovers".

She was a practical pacifist in the sense that she helped the war effort by working as a fire warden and by travelling around the country raising funds for the Peace Pledge Union's food relief campaign. She was vilified for speaking out against saturation bombing of German cities through her 1944 booklet "Massacre by Bombing". Her principled pacifist position was vindicated somewhat when in 1945, the Nazis' Black Book of 2000 people to be immediately arrested in Britain after a German invasion was shown to include her name.

In 1966 she suffered a fall in a badly-lit London street while on the way to a speaking engagement. She fulfilled the engagement but afterwards found she had suffered a fractured left arm and broken little finger of her right hand. These injuries began a physical decline in which her mind became more confused and withdrawn. [Paul Berry in the foreword to Testament of Experience, 1980 Virago edition]

Vera Brittain never fully got over the death of her brother Edward. When she died in Wimbledon on 29 March 1970, aged 76, her will requested that her ashes be scattered on Edward's grave on the Asiago Plateau in Italy – "...for nearly 50 years much of my heart has been in that Italian village cemetery". [ Berry and Bostridge, Vera Brittain: A Life, 1995] Her daughter honoured this request in September 1970. [cite web |author= |url=http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/brittain.htm |title=Prose & Poetry – Vera Brittain |accessdate=2008-05-27 |date=August 2001 |publisher=First World War.com]

Cultural legacy

She was portrayed by Cheryl Campbell in the 1979 BBC Two television adaptation of "Testament of Youth".

Songwriter and fellow Anglican Pacifist Fellowship member Sue Gilmurray wrote a song in Brittain's memory, titled "Vera". [http://www.abolishwar.org.uk/news8.pdf]

In 1998 Brittain's First World War letters were edited by Alan Bishop and Mark Bostridge and published under the title "Letters from a Lost Generation". They were also adapted by Bostridge for a Radio Four series starring Amanda Root and Rupert Graves.

'Because You Died', a new selection of Brittain's First World War poetry and prose, edited by Mark Bostridge will be published by Virago in 2008 to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice.

In November 2008 BBC One will broadcast an hour-length documentary on Brittain as part of its Remembrance Day programmes.

Biographies

*"Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life," by Deborah Gorham, University of Toronto Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8020-8339-0.
*"Vera Brittain: A Life," by Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, Chatto & Windus, 1995, Virago 2001. ISBN 1-86049-872-8.
*"Vera Brittain" by Hilary Bailey, Penguin Books, 1987, ISBN 0140080031.

References

* Brief Biography by Paul Berry, her literary executor, in the foreword to "Testament of Experience", 1980 Virago edition.
* [http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/people/pst_vera.html Profile of Vera Brittain] at Peace Pledge Union website. Accessed June 2008
* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/biography/story/0,,1031769,00.html The making of a peacenik] , Mark Bostridge, "The Guardian", 2003-08-30. Accessed June 2008

External links

* [http://www.jamd.com/search?assettype=g&assetid=52752045&text=Vera+Brittain Images of Vera Brittain at JAMD.]
* [http://www.litweb.net/biography/374/Vera_Brittain.html Biography and List of Works] at Litweb.
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSvcid=51657&GRid=21019895& Memorial Page on FindaGrave]
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