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Testament of Youth

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Testament of Youth

By: Vera Brittain
Narrated by: Sheila Mitchell
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About this listen

 NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

A British woman recalls coming of age during World War I in this unforgettable true story of young love, war, and how to make sense of the darkest times

'Remains one of the most powerful and widely read war memoirs of all time'
Guardian

'A haunting elegy for a lost generation'
The Times

'Should be compulsory reading'
Daily Mail

In 1914 when war was declared, Vera Brittain was twenty, preparing to study at Oxford. Four years later her life - and the lives of her whole generation - had changed in a way that would have been unimaginable.

TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, one of the most famous autobiographies of the First World War, is Brittain's account of how she survived those agonising years; how she lost the man she loved; how she nursed the wounded and how she emerged into an altered world.

A passionate record of a lost generation, it made Vera Brittain one of the best-loved writers of her time, and has lost none of its power to shock, move and enthral readers since its first publication in 1933.

With an afterword from Kate Mosse OBE.©1970 Mark Bostridge & Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Literary Executors of Vera Brittain (P)1998 Isis Publishing Ltd Art & Literature Authors Historical Military Women War Heartfelt Thought-Provoking
All stars
Most relevant
A reminder why we need peace and not war. Vera Britten’s story is movingly told and so important to remember more than 100 years later.

Important and unforgettable- make peace not war

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Enjoyed this memoir very much for both it's intimate personal perspective and historical commentary. I found the readers clipped British accent difficult for my American ear.

Memoir as riveting as any historical novel

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Beautifully read, deeply touching I have listened to this many times, least we not forget what they all went through.

Beautiful and deeply touching

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learning how to forgive yourself for surviving, whilst accepting that life and love moves on

a moving insight to living through immense tragedy

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This is a life-changing book about a changed life.

The expert narration of Sheila Mitchell brings the vivid and brilliant mind of Vera Brittain into the sharpest mental focus, and this voice from a dead past speaks the words of the dead into present that needs - perhaps, sadly, will always need - to hear the lessons of history. Her near future failed to heed them; I fear the voices of the Great War through which she lived and suffered are needed as much as those of the subsequent conflict that Brittain's commitment to internationalism could not prevent. From out of those two disasters we have built, in the west at least, structures that have prevented, for the most part, the return of those conflicts for a period that has extended long beyond Vera Brittain's own life yet to which now we seem bent on turning our backs.

Vera Brittain's emotional and intellectual acuity and conviction has steeled my own resolve to be on the side of the right, even if I fear I may not be in the right side of history.

Emotion recollected in perspicacity

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