Cover Story

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Before the country embarks on a year of commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of the start of World War 1, during which so many young OUs gave their lives, it is worth noting that 2013 marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth. One of the most famous memoirs of the 20th century, when it was published in August 1933, it was described by the Sunday Times as “a book which stands alone among books written by women about the war”.

Testament of Youth was written in tribute to her fiance Roland Leighton (L 1909), her brother Edward (L 1909) and her two best friends Victor Richardson (L 1909) and Geoffrey Thurlow. Vera describes in detail her visit to see Edward, Roland and Victor during Speech Day at Uppingham in 1914 and though there were rumours of war in Europe at that time, no one could have foreseen the carnage that was to unfold. “I have written so much of Uppingham Speech Day because it was the one perfect summer idyll that I ever experienced as well as my last care-free entertainment before the flood. The lovely legacy of a vanished world, it is etched with minute detail on the tablets of my memory. Never again, for me and my generation, was there to be any festival, the joy of which no cloud would darken, no remembrance invalidate.” Vera’s joy at celebrating Speech Day with those she loved is evident from her memoirs, though the words of the Headmaster, the Rev’d Harry Mackenzie in his speech that day seem to warn of things to come: “If a man cannot be useful to his country, he is better dead.” Vera describes hers as a ‘condemned generation’, “who could not know how soon the time would come when we should have no more hope”. Roland Leighton was killed on the Western Front during Christmas 1915, Victor Richardson was killed by a sniper in France in 1917 and her beloved brother Edward survived the Somme only to die in Italy in the closing stages of the war. Inspired by the sacrifices of her peers, Vera Brittain abandoned her studies at Oxford to become a volunteer nurse and her harrowing experiences formed the basis of her memoirs. Eighty years on Testament of Youth remains one of the most moving books ever written about the damage of war and its continuing personal cost. With Uppingham at its heart, and in memory of the 447 OUs who gave their lives in the Great War, it is perhaps a worthy starting point for the year ahead.

Edward Brittain, Roland Leighton and Victor Richardson, sitting on an OTC supplied box at camp. Source: William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library.