WW1

Alive Day and A Diary Without Dates

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Tammy Duckworth is a Senator from Illinois and fourteen years ago she was a captain with the Illinois National Guard serving in Iraq.    On November 12th 2004 she was piloting a Black Hawk helicopter when a rocket-propelled grenade tore through the cockpit. Duckworth’s right leg was gone in an instant, shredded in a flash … Read more

The War is Too Much With Us

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I thought of going back to France, but realised the absurdity of the notion. Since 1916, the fear of gas obsessed me: any unusual smell, even a sudden strong smell of flowers in a garden, was enough to send me trembling. And I couldn’t face the sound of heavy shelling now; the noise of a car … Read more

Suvla Bay, Gallipoli 1915

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It seemed to them that they were to go on living like that, and writing like that, for ever and ever. Then suddenly, like a chasm in a smooth road, the war came. – Virginia Woolf from The Leaning Tower, A paper read to the Workers’ Educational Association, Brighton, May 1940. Writing and speaking in … Read more

The Road Ahead

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The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. Before the advent of motorways in the UK (first section of the first – the M1 opened in 1959) it was true that almost any straight road you found in England was built by the Romans. The burst of road building during the industrial revolution meant … Read more

Women Artists of WW1: Mary Riter Hamilton

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This post was updated on March 9th 2019 with the addition of a postscript: A film about Hamilton’s life and work via ht @LucyLondon7 This is one of those “nevertheless she persisted” stories. The Canadian artist Mary Riter Hamilton had studied in Europe before having to return to Canada to care for her ailing mother. … Read more

Women Artists of WW1: Norah Neilson Gray

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When Norah Neilson Gray (1882 -1931) taught at St. Columba’s School for Girls in Kilmacolm her students called her “Purple Patch” because she was always urging them to look for the color in the shadows. You can see that she took her own advice in this painting Hôpital Auxilaire 1918. It shows the reception area of the Royaumont … Read more

Women Artists of WW1: Nellie Isaac

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There isn’t much to learn about Nellie Elizabeth Isaac online and some of it’s inaccurate. But as always with the string of magic beads that is the internet – there is always something to discover. Isaac was born in 1886 and grew up in respectable middle-class Hampstead (not West Ham). Her father Percy Lewis Isaac was … Read more

A Perfect Match

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Some paintings are made to pair with a poem. Read Edward Thomas’s As the Team’s Head Brass and then take another look at A Winter Landscape, 1926 by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889–1946) As the Team’s Head Brass As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs … Read more

Women Artists of WW1: Iso Rae

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In 1918 Australia appointed sixteen official war artists. All were men. Iso Rae – who had lived in France throughout the war – was not included. The Australian impressionist painter Isobel Rae (1860-1940) moved with her mother and sister Alison – also an artist – from Melbourne to Paris in 1887. Three years later they … Read more

Night Patrol

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All agreed that 1917 had been a sad offender. All observed that 1918 did not look promising at its birth. At midnight on New Year’s Eve 1918 the poet Edmund Blunden looked out over the whole Ypres battlefield: It was bitterly cold, and the deep snow all round lay frozen. We drank healths, and stared … Read more

Holiday Greetings from 1917

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Time for some seasonal greetings from the front. The traditional Christmas message of charity, reconciliation, and peace on earth now ensured through violence and exploding Christmas puddings. These first are from Fergus Mackain – an advertising illustrator who grew up in Canada and the USA. In 1915 – leaving his wife and children – he worked … Read more

Saki: The Open Window and the Birds of WW1

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“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn. “It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?” Framton Nuttel is in … Read more

Ode to Garlic

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I don’t think I peeled a clove of garlic until I was at least 21. It wasn’t because I didn’t prepare my own food. I cooked through most of college and acquired all kinds of ingenious, makeshift cooking skills using a gas-ring fueled by a penny meter in a narrow kitchen with no oven, no … Read more