Stepping up to the plate
THE WAR GREW uglier. A point of no-return had been reached a long time ago, whatever that meant. Its implications demanded an ever-greater ruthlessness…
1916
Noblesse oblige
IT CANNOT HAVE been true that nations were divided neatly into those who cared deeply for the lives of their people and those who…
Always personal
WHAT IS TRAGEDY if it is not personal? It engulfed Vera Brittain this week and, ever afterwards, her life was marked out by loss. Her…
The death of liberal England?
THE OSTENSIBLE DRAMA of the week was the evacuation from Gallipoli, This was victory of a kind, albeit one snatched from the jaws of a…
I have shot a duke
THE YEAR ENDED in a climax of suffering. The narratives of wartime lend themselves easily to hyperbole, but there is no doubt that the last…