Guest sceadugenga Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 There were some wonderful novels came out of WW2 and I'd like to hear readers opinions of similar literature written after the Great War. Personally I had trouble reading "A Farewell To Arms" but I'll admit I haven't tried for years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
withcall Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 Don't hold your breath for replies - there used to be an 'element' on this forum who believed that it was sacriligious to even mention WW1 in fiction if you hadn't actually served. This view, IMHO, handily dispenses with the central plank of fiction writing - the use of the imagination, and shows an inibility to understand the difference between fiction and history. To answer your question, I don't know of many contemporary writers in the 20s and 30s who wrote great WW1 novels, leaving aside Erich Maria Remarque. To my mind, the better novels set in the war came out a whole generation later, the best being, in my mind 'Covenant With Death' by John Harris. It has been said that there was little poetry of any great value to come out of WW2 - maybe WW1 had its poetry, and WW2 had its fiction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truthergw Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man, by Sassoon. Verdun, by Jules Romaine, Education Before Verdun, by Arnold Zweig, August 1914, by Solzhenitsyn. These are books I have gathered along the way and I can recommend but it is not an area where I claim expertise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Filsell Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 I think your question is a tough one to answer since many of the novels by participants were written from and/or featured their own experiences. Equally a number of factual accounts - likeGraves, Sassoon and T E Lawrence - are clearly fictionalised to some degree. Two early novels , now largely forgotten, but highly though of at the time, which draw heavily on personal experience that I particularly admire, and would recommend, are Medal Without Bar, ( Richard Blacker - 1930) and Peter Jackson Cigar Merchant (Gilbert Frankau - c1930) The already mentioned Covenant with Death (post WW2) is also a well written and deeply researched account by a non combatant. There are many others (that I consider particularly fine). But these three - all fairly readily available through abebooks will give a feel of things. Hope this helps David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barkalotloudly Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 "The Whistlers Room" regards John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulgranger Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 'Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant' is available as a download from, I think, Project Guteneberg. But gentlemen, the best novel by a combatant is, of course, 'The Middle Parts of Fortune' by Frederick Manning! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarryBettsMCDCM Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 "The Despatch Riders" an ancient Boys book in the George Henty style; of two English Public School boys on their first European Holiday in 1914 on Motorcycles who;when War breaks out; enlist into the Belgian Army,as Motor Cycle Despatch riders,Great BoP stuff & when I read it ~my First "Proper" book @ the age of Eight {it had been my Dads} spurred me on to my current interests!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IanA Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 Henry Williamson wrote five novels about the great war. See the link below - http://www.henrywilliamson.co.uk/index.php...6&Itemid=97 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Broomfield Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 The Barber of Putney, by J B Morton (aka "Beachcomber") is an oddity - if you can find it, well worth reading. Also (although a bit anti-General) The General by C S Forester is a good read. I suppose Lloyd George's memoirs don't count? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IanA Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 A brilliant (autobiographical) RFC novel is "Winged Victory" by Victor M. Yeates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SMG65 Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 'The Middle Parts of Fortune' (also known as 'Her Privates We') is excellent. I also recommend 'Return of the Brute' by Liam Flaherty. Sean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JPAE Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 Sceadugenga, 30 years ago I read a trilogy from John Masters which took place during WW1 and switched between home in England and the trenches of Flanders. At the time I must have been engrossed for fiction is rarely my reading matter. However, they're in the attic still. I can remember being very taken by the description of the English countryside and its social mores, rather than the Great War adventures. Phil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Reed Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 Personally, I've long believed that Manning's Her Privates We was the finest book of the war, with Williamson's Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight coming a close second. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JPAE Posted 29 March , 2009 Share Posted 29 March , 2009 I suspect these Masters' novels were written post WW2 so my previous post may be both spherical and plural. Phil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sceadugenga Posted 30 March , 2009 Share Posted 30 March , 2009 Thanks guys. Personally I tend to agree with withcall's comment..... It has been said that there was little poetry of any great value to come out of WW2 - maybe WW1 had its poetry, and WW2 had its fiction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sapper Will Posted 30 March , 2009 Share Posted 30 March , 2009 "I think your question is a tough one to answer since many of the novels by participants were written from and/or featured their own experiences. Equally a number of factual accounts - likeGraves, Sassoon and T E Lawrence - are clearly fictionalised to some degree. Two early novels , now largely forgotten, but highly though of at the time, which draw heavily on personal experience that I particularly admire, and would recommend, are Medal Without Bar, ( Richard Blacker - 1930) and Peter Jackson Cigar Merchant (Gilbert Frankau - c1930) The already mentioned Covenant with Death (post WW2) is also a well written and deeply researched account by a non combatant. There are many others (that I consider particularly fine). But these three - all fairly readily available through abebooks will give a feel of things. Hope this helps David" Sassoon's three books are not factual accounts but novels. The title of the last--Sherston's progress--as well as the trilogy's overall title of The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston are indicators. "It has been said that there was little poetry of any great value to come out of WW2 - maybe WW1 had its poetry, and WW2 had its fiction." I don't agree with this at all. If you do some reading on the subject you will see that many highly successful novels have come out of the Great War. The problem is that the "wave" of WW1 fiction came in the late 20s and 30s and is therefore no longer prominent in our cultural awareness. There is a fascinating book called The Novels of World War One which reviews virtual every work of fiction generated by the war, and the list is tremendous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Filsell Posted 30 March , 2009 Share Posted 30 March , 2009 Sapper you precisely indicate the problem - fiction or non fiction. Never trust a glib dismissal from any source; as to the comment that there was no worthwhile fiction from WW1 and no poetry from WW2 you could hardly be more wrong. Forum mambers have just recommended a raft of really worthwhile and highly aclaimed fiction - as WW2 poetry just check it out. There is a raft of very fine material indeed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ulsterlad2 Posted 30 March , 2009 Share Posted 30 March , 2009 Hello. Here is an English translation of Roland Dorgeles's French novel Les Croix de bois. http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/wwone/wc.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salesie Posted 30 March , 2009 Share Posted 30 March , 2009 Don't hold your breath for replies - there used to be an 'element' on this forum who believed that it was sacriligious to even mention WW1 in fiction if you hadn't actually served. This view, IMHO, handily dispenses with the central plank of fiction writing - the use of the imagination, and shows an inibility to understand the difference between fiction and history. Priceless, Withcall - and absolutely spot-on. The irony being, the same "element" used to spend most of their time on the forum arguing about the veracity of the many tomes of WW1 non-fiction - to the extent that you'd be forgiven for thinking that much of the so-called non-fiction is actually fictional per se (depending on whose post you're reading at the time, of course). If anyone wants a little taste of modern WW1 fiction (and poetry) on the forum, take a look at the culture pages (specifically the MGWAT threads) - no novels, but plenty of short stories, poetry etc. with a WW1 theme. Cheers-salesie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Hederer Posted 31 March , 2009 Share Posted 31 March , 2009 I'll throw in a more recent addition, "A Soldier of the Great War," by Mark Helprin. Covers the life and times of an Italian before, during and after the Great War. Takes some flights of fancy (It's REALLY fiction) but it's one of my favorite books and the author's style is fantastic. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul guthrie Posted 31 March , 2009 Share Posted 31 March , 2009 I am of the school who are largely dismissive of novels by those no there such as Birdsong. Her Privates We is superb, Spanish Farm Trilogy by Mottram nearly as good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolphin Posted 31 March , 2009 Share Posted 31 March , 2009 Four very entertaining novels set in the pre-War and Great War period are the Otto Prohaska books by John Biggins: A Sailor of Austria, The Emperor's Coloured Coat, The Two-Headed Eagle and Tomorrow the World. They detail the adventures of an Austro-Hungarian naval officer who has has periods of duty in submarines and is also attached to the KuK Army Service. The books are well written, and the incidents are possible. Gareth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Broomfield Posted 1 April , 2009 Share Posted 1 April , 2009 Spanish Farm Trilogy by Mottram nearly as good. Paul - thanks for that. Read it years ago: must take it off the shelf and do so again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulgranger Posted 1 April , 2009 Share Posted 1 April , 2009 'Death of a Hero' by Richard Aldington is dated but worth a read. He was an Angry Young man long before John Osborne. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stripeyman Posted 4 April , 2009 Share Posted 4 April , 2009 'Death of a Hero' by Richard Aldington is dated but worth a read. He was an Angry Young man long before John Osborne. I had forgotten all about that book, read it when I was 14, a bit errr adult I remember for a young chap who was still at school. My mum also said I should not be reading All Quiet on the Western Front, even earlier. Bob Grundy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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