Foxed Books

Many of the institutions we are familiar with date from this period – the Houses of Parliament, the Inns of Court and Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The Plantagenets were powerful rulers, and consequently their skills or shortcomings affected the whole country. It was a time of chivalry and learning, mixed with violence and upheaval, ending with the calamitous reign of Richard II. Don’t be put off by the size of the book – it is an engrossing read.

This book explains how the experience in the trenches resulted in the classic works of poetry, novels and memoirs that emerged from British soldiers who endured World War One. Fussell uses as his main literary sources Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden. He makes the point that reading was the only respite from trench warfare and that writers such as John Bunyan and Kipling gave the ‘common soldier’ a framework to help him understand the unimaginable events that were happening around him. Fussell’s final point concerns the effects of the Great War on our modern memory; how it has informed our view of modern warfare and has impacted on our cultural and social fabric.