The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the…

This portrait of British social doings during the two years from Nov 11, 1918, to Nov. 11, 1920, is extremely fascinating reading even if, at times, I wondered what was the point of some of the material included in the account. There is incisive study of the matters in Britain related to the Great War during those two years, including how the two minutes of silence on each Armistice Day developed and climaxing in the burial on Nov 11, 1920 of the Unknown Soldier in Westminister Abbery. The research seems well-done, and there is an extensive bibliography. When I finished the book I looked back on the experience of reading the book with great satisfaction. I would like to read the author's book The Perfect Summer (a study of Britain in 1911, before the Great War seemed possible). The author is the granddaughter of Harold Nicolson and the daughter of Nigel Nicholson--authors of three good books I have heretofore read. Tlie author of this book lives up the excellence displayed in the booksof her grandfather and father. ( )

A collection of personal snapshots from the two years between Armistice Day and the Burial of the Unknown Soldier, anchored in the center by the two-minute Great Silence observed in all of Great Britain on Armistice Day 1919.

Ms. Nicolson writes "history from below" in the sense that this is not primarily the story of the politics of Britain of the time (except in the ways the movements from below affected them), but about how different people acted and reacted in the immediate aftermath of the trauma of World War I and the changes which immediately enveloped Britain. Butlers found their services no longer needed or afforded, the mobility offered by the automobile offered entrepreneurs new opportunity, and the newly-developed science of plastic surgery eased the suffering of men deformed by the ghastly wounds suffered at the front. Ms. Nicolson does not tell us these things happened; she shows us by telling the stories, reconstructed by diaries and letters, of those who lived the changes.

As a pastor, I was interested in how religion figured in this history. Religious observance declined after the war for three reasons: the lack of the corpse of the war dead meant no funerals (hadn't they ever heard of a memorial service?); and there were fewer marriages and fewer baptisms. But there was also a sense that religion had failed and simply become a cheerleader for the war. I don't know that this is untrue, but I wish that Ms. Nicolson had included among her snapshots religious folk who were trying to come to grips with that very question.

In Europe in 1919, Karl Barth wrote his monumental commentary on Romans, the first shot fired (if you will) by the Neo-Orthodox who rejected their teachers' blind acceptance of the necessity of war. In Britain, the monuments of the inter-war years include the Service of Lessons and Carols from Cambridge, begun in 1919 as a response to the tragedy of the war. 92 years later it survives and thrives, and is broadcast around the world, as much a relic of the time of The Great Silence as any, and a constructive Christian response at that.

Ms. Nicolson's book is well-written, its strength lying in her attention to detail, which makes the few typographical and factual errors more jarring. It is a work that may lead to further reading as we approach the hundredth anniversary of "The War to End All Wars." ( )

Written by the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West, The Great Silence chronicles the devastating aftermath of World War I on the citizens of Britain. Too little is studied about this brutal (and possibly senseless) war whose peace treaty sowed the seeds of the great conflagration that occurred twenty years later.

Ms. Nicolson begins her tale in November, 1918 and reveals what was once called "The Great War" left in its wake: millions dead, even more horribly maimed in both body and mind, and a government that was totally unprepared to deal with its wounded veterans in a sympathetic manner. In the pace of two years, the author illustrates the healing process the British people went through to try and make sense of what had happened and to build meaningful lives out of the wreckage of war.

This is a fascinating history of a time too often overlooked. ( )

Where I got the book: bought retail with a Borders gift card, in a huge rush after the bankruptcy was announced. It had been on my TBR list for a while.

The Great Silence is a snapshot of Britain just after World War I. It covers the period from when the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, to late 1920 when the body of the Unknown Soldier was interred in Westminster Abbey. It covers subjects as diverse as shell shock, plastic surgery for horrendous facial wounds, the Paris Peace Conference, birth control, and the recreational use of drugs by a generation who desperately wanted to forget the recent past.

One thing I really liked about this book was the way the lives and memories of ordinary and extraordinary people are tapped to provide juicy little snippets of information that brought me much nearer to the subjects under discussion. I felt that I got a good sense of what a period of intense mental and physical agony did to the psyche of an entire country. I've always loved the novels of that period for what they said and didn't say about the First World War: those four years were so clearly the dividing point between a strictly ordered world of class distinctions and certainty and the modern world of social mobility and experimentation. The Great Silence is a good companion volume for readers with an interest in the period.

It's not a deep work of history: I even found a couple of potential howlers and one definite one (a line suggesting that the Titanic sank in 1902). And yet The Great Silence had the considerable merit of being interesting and readable, and I'm a great supporter of popularizing history. ( )

Although there have been conflicts since, the Great War of 1914-18 always haunts my imagination on November 11. Thousands of soldiers were killed, and many more suffered horrific injuries, in the senseless sacrifice of nearly a whole generation of husbands, fiancés, fathers and brothers. Yet a way of life died with them, which brought many positive changes to life in England, including women’s rights and employment, new tastes in music and entertainment, but also the loss of past traditions and historical buildings. The country was torn between wanting to forget the war and move on with life, and needing to memorialise and mourn for the glorious dead.

'The Great Silence' tells of the years immediately after the Great War, between the Armistice of 1918 and the funeral of the Unknown Warrior in November 1920, evoking the feelings of grief and anger, acknowledgement and hope for the future, experienced by those left behind. Instead of a dry narrative of events, however, witnesses from all walks of life – the Prince of Wales and a soldier named Tommy Atkins, a society hostess and a maid, ten year old Tom Mitford and three year old Pam Parish – recount memories of that time, through interviews, letters and diaries. The pioneering techniques of Harold Gillies, the ‘father of plastic surgery’, who reconstructed the shattered faces (and self-confidence) of soldiers disfigured in the war, and sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd, who created painted tin masks for the men, are in equal parts fascinating and disturbing. Later chapters concentrate on the new generation of women such as Lady Ottoline Morrell, who flirted with war poet Siegfried Sassoon, Oxford graduate Winifred Holtby, and novelist Vera Brittain.

Appropriately, the chapter headings follow the different stages of grief, from shock, both of the soldiers and the after-effects of war on a grieving population, through the release of cinema and dancing, to the acceptance of a new society. I found the chapters on Armistice Day 1919, with the first two minutes silence, and the burial of the Unknown Soldier particularly emotional, as expected, but also the Duke of Devonshire’s reluctant decision to sell Devonshire House in London, which was later demolished (‘sacrifices made in silence’), and art reflecting life in Abel Gance’s film 'J’accuse'!, where ‘dead men on leave’ at Verdun played soldiers rising from the dead in the final scene. Evelyn Waugh dismissed the ceremony of the first ‘Great Silence’ as ‘artificial nonsense and sentimentality’, and even the King thought it was better to look forward rather than remember, but the actual service united the country in grief: ‘Bicycles braked, road menders laid down their spades, telephone operators unplugged their connection boards, factory workers switched off their machinery, dock workers stopped their unloading, school children stopped their lessons …’ Two years later, the same objections were made to bringing home the unidentifiable remains of a British soldier from French soil, but the service at Westminster provided a chance for mourning families to finally shed tears over a coffin and say goodbye to loved ones.

‘A tiny child approached the monument holding his mother’s hand tightly. As he bent to lay a posy among the mass of flowers already there, he shouted in such a loud voice that, despite the huge sob that engulfed his words, the listening crowd thought they must have mistaken his age. “Oh Mummy,” he cried, “what a lovely garden Daddy has got.”’

Even now, almost a century later, it is vitally important that we remember the sacrifice of life and upheaval of society that were the legacies of the Great War. Although the Last Tommy died in 2009, Sir Edwin Lutyens’ cenotaph remains, a permanent symbol in stone to replace the temporary monument constructed out of wood and plaster for the Victory Parade in July, 1919. Juliet Nicolson deftly and respectfully reminds us of the significance of the red poppy worn every November by telling the stories of the men, women and children who lived through the Great War. ( )