Voices from the Great War

Download or read book Voices from the Great War written by Peter Vansittart and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1998 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together Sigmund Freud, Osip Mandelstam, Lloyd George, Bertrand Russell, Isaac Rosenberg, Sigfried Sassoon, Vera Brittain -voices famous and unknown - Peter Vansittart takes us through the course of the Great War, juxtaposing letters from the trenches with music-hall songs, and the words of poets and politicians. Linking the public and the personal, the history with the myth, his rich and unorthodox anthology forms a moving image of everything that went into the War, and culminated in its 'scalding waste of spirit'. 'A historical echo chamber, agog with eye-witnesses, newspaper head-lines, memoirs, massacres and maniacs. He arranges his relic with moving irony. ' Sunday Times 'This valuable and entertaining anthology. . . does not set out to de-mythologize the war. . . But it goes a long way towards decosmeticizing it, showing the savage realities in which the myth had its roots. ' Observer