Mark Bostridge and Paul Berry: Vera Brittain – A Life

Here’s what I knew about Vera Brittain before I read this book. Wrote ‘Testament of Youth’. Dedicated feminist, pacifist and writer. Mother of the goddess-baroness Shirley Williams. It was once my honour to hold open a door for Baroness Williams and it was all I could do not to fall on my knees before her. What can you do in the presence of your heroines except turn into a gibbering idiot?

Now I know much more about Vera’s public life – her campaigns, her causes, her beliefs – but I still don’t feel like I really know or understand Vera. Raised in a stifling, horrendously provincial village, Vera wants to escape to Oxford but no sooner does she arrive that World War I breaks out. Feeling like education is no longer relevant, she becomes a nurse and learns just how poorly her upbringing has prepared her for the world. Her finance, her brother and their two best friends are all killed in the War. She returns to Oxford only to find that her fellow students see her as irrelevant, almost embarrassing – how could she and her contemporaries have been taken in so easily? She is saved only by her friendship with Winifred Holtby and together they start to build a new life in London, trying to become writers and enjoying their hard-won freedom. Eventually, she gets married and has an odd, semi-detached relationship with her husband. Thanks to Testament of Youth, she becomes a well known campaigner for peace and has to again live through the destruction of all her hopes in the Second World War.

I’m trying to work out why I can empathise with her but I find it so hard to warm to her. She had to deal with unbearable tragedy almost beyond comprehension – why can’t I feel more for her?

Obviously, as she herself says, these early experiences are hardly the best to encourage the development of a sense of humour. But I think it’s more than that.

Partly, I think it’s her own sense of self-importance – appointing herself as the spokesperson for a generation when actually, she is very remote and aloof from her contemporaries. The writers of the book point out the irony of being such a combative pacifist. I think it’s equally ironic that this devoted feminist should find it so hard to have meaningful, lasting friendships with women with the exception of Winifred.

And partly, I think it’s that she lives her life according to principles rather than passions. She’s just so determined that marriage won’t trap her that she goes completely the opposite way and is only married at arms-length. She very consciously decides to get married in order to prove a point – that women can have children and have a career. Love just isn’t a factor in the decision. I can completely understand that Vera felt she could never compromise, never give an inch, in case everything was taken away from her. But it does make for a rather sterile life – defined by campaigns rather than by relationships. It is hard to relate to.

Do I admire her? Yes. Am I grateful she existed and helped build this world of choices I take for granted and she could never dream of? Absolutely. But can I love her? No.