'Vera Brittain's Early Life - A Different Story' with Kathryn Ecclestone

A real treat for our March Words on Wednesday event.

Vera Brittain’s haunting 1933 First World War memoir, Testament of Youth, is acclaimed as one of the most important autobiographies of the last hundred years.  When it came to her ‘provincial young ladyhood’ in the once-fashionable spa town of Buxton between 1905 and 1915, Vera condemned it with remorseless fervour, but were her criticisms justified?

Testament of Lost Youth – the Early Life and Loves of Vera Brittain draws on her unpublished diary and letters to shed new light on Vera’s cossetted middle-class upbringing during ‘that unparalleled age of tranquil comfort and rich materialism’.  In contrast to her own rather one-sided story of that period, this new biography offers a much richer story of a complicated, unusual young woman whose youthful exuberance and optimism were trashed by war.

Amongst Vera’s many passions was an enchantment with the Lake District, sparked by family connections with the Holehird Estate near Windermere and her love of Wordsworth.

The author
After retiring from a career in higher education, including professorships at the universities of Birmingham and Sheffield, this is Kathryn’s first biography. She and her husband John live in Martindale.