Books Briefly

...These are the fresh, breathless diaries that grew into Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, her autobiographical account (televised last year by Masterpiece Theater) of Brittain's blossoming days at Oxford, her love affair with the young poet Roland Leighton, her service in World War I as a nursing aide near the Western Front, and the devastating effect on her life of the deaths of Roland and her brother in that "war to end wars...

...An important addition to the growing volume of women's diaries now surfacing, this is also a document for feminist and peace collections and a charming, touching glimpse into the mind of a sensitive and intelligent young woman innocently plummeted into the sublimest of loves and the goriest of wars...

...Brittain went on to become a leading pacifist writer, lecturer, and organizer, as well as the mother of Shirley Williams, a founder of Great Britain's new Social Democratic Party...

...The diaries cover a range of experience and emotion in Brittain's early years and are mainly a pleasure to read though they sometimes get bogged down in detail...