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LEARN MORE - FICTION
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Journey's End
R C Sherriff (Penguin, 2000) £6.99
Emphasising the tragedy of warfare while avoiding sentimentality, this drama shows how young soldiers on the frontline in France are changed by war.
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Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme
Frank McGuinness (Faber, 1986) £7.99
McGuinness's play recounts the story of a group of young Ulstermen who go off to fight and die at the Battle of the Somme. Not a simple anti-war drama, this complex character study accurately portrays the miseries of war.
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All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque, translated by Brian Murdoch (Vintage, 1996) £5.99
Remarque produced one of the greatest anti-war novels of the First World War. Based on his own experiences, it depicts the horrors of war from the ordinary German soldier's perspective. It was made into a film in 1930. Both the book and the film were banned by the Nazis when they seized power in 1933. For an examination of the effect of this book by historian Gregor Dallas, see Allied tears, German tears.
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Birdsong
Sebastian Faulks (Vintage, 1994) £6.99
This novel follows the life and loves of its main protagonist, Stephen Wraysford, through the horrors of trench warfare and the Battle of the Somme. Stephen's experience of war and his affair with a married woman break down his perceptions of good and evil, right and wrong.
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Demian
Hermann Hesse (Picador, 1995). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Hesse was denounced by his fellow Germans during World War I for his pacifist and anti-militarist views. In 1919, he published his novel Demian which centres on its main protagonists' struggle between orderly bourgeois values and chaotic sensuality. This novel was especially popular among young veterans of the war.
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A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway (Arrow, 1994) £5.99
Hemingway's great wartime novel, set against the backdrop of the war in Italy and first published in 1929, is based on the author's own experiences as an American ambulance driver with the Italian army. The horrors of war and its effects on humanity are explored against the novel's central love theme.
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The Good Soldier: A tale of passion
Ford Madox Ford (Penguin, 2002) £7.99
Ford joined the British army in 1916 and served as a junior officer in the 38th Infantry Brigade. He later wrote a series of war novels, beginning with this one, which explores the forbidden sexual passions of the English upper classes before World War I. The Good Soldier, published in 1915, was chosen one of the top 100 English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the US publisher Modern Library.
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Magnus Merriman
Eric Linklater (Canongate, 1990) £4.95
Linklater was one of the early 20th century's most versatile novelists. This semi-autobiographical novel, originally published in 1934, includes a humorous account of the main character's experiences in the Black Watch regiment.
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The New Confessions
William Boyd (Penguin, 1988) £7.99
John James Todd is an ambitious film-maker. He learns his craft in the First World War where, in miserable conditions, he endeavours to shoot the definitive image. Todd disapproves of a rival's propaganda methods, but he is equally guilty of using the war to advance his own career. Boyd's novel mirrors and updates The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as it follows Todd's experiences through the horrors of trench warfare to the glamour of Hollywood.
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The Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, The Ghost Road
Pat Barker (Viking, 1996) £20
One of the few female writers to have written about the First World War, Barker has produced a trilogy of books on the subject, the third of which - The Ghost Road - won the 1995 Booker Prize. Regeneration - subsequently made into a film - is set in Craiglockhart Castle, the military hospital where Siegfried Sassoon met Wilfred Owen, and explores the attempts made to 'cure' officers suffering from post-battle trauma. Drawing of the history of the Pemberton Billing libel trial in which all Britain's military troubles were laid at the door of the British homosexuals, The Eye in the Door examines themes of persecution and prejudice alongside questions of class and identity. The Ghost Road concentrates on Sarah, a young woman working in a munitions factory, and on Wilfred Owen.
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