Nigel Jones
Too Many To Speak Of
Ninety years ago, at 7.30am on Saturday, 1July 1916, a summer day whose weather, as Siegfried Sassoon wrote, was ‘of the kind commonly described as heavenly’, whistles blew along the trenches of the Somme Front. Thousands of men, encumbered by sixty pounds of kit, climbed laboriously but obediently over the top and walked into No Man’s Land and history. It was the start of ‘the Big Push’: an offensive that has become a byword for the monstrous stupidity of war. Nearly a century on, as these four books attest, the myth of the greatest battle of the Great War looms as large as ever in the British national consciousness.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
While you're waiting for the March issue of Literary Review to pop through your letterbox, have another read of February's cover piece: Richard Davenport-Hines on the stormy letters Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick wrote to one another.
http://ow.ly/iHKh50ywe1x
What's the worth of being zen when the icecaps are melting and populism looms? The world's leading thinkers including @ronpurser will assess the 'mindfulness' craze at the world's largest philosophy and music festival, @HTLGIFestival, this May. Learn more: http://ow.ly/STu650ywARQ
'Feminists have been caricatured so often that it’s worth recalling the many obstacles placed in the path of women campaigning for equal rights.'
@polblonde on @helenlewis's new book about difficult women throughout history.
http://ow.ly/Is9c50ywe7G