The bravest women of their (and just about any other) time, they left their protective parents and a world of white gloves and chaperoned afternoon teas, where they were barely permitted to touch the hand of a male companion, for the French battlefields of World War One and the hellish field hospitals there, washing naked, wounded men, treating their wounds, the stumps of their amputated limbs, their lost sight, their mustard gas-poisoned lungs and their shell shock. Mocked as privileged snobs out for a thrill, they struggled to prove their strength and capacity over and over again, and they did.
Vera Brittain as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, 1915. Photograph: the VB Estate/McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Canada VIA The Guardian
Among them was Vera Brittain, who’d fought to be one of the earliest women at Oxford, her father permitting her to enroll and risk “becoming a blue stocking” only because her beloved younger brother Edward refused to go if she could not. Testament of Youth , the story of her struggles to attend Oxford, her brief presence there and her life-shattering experiences as a wartime nurse, is a classic, still in print and still beloved.
Now it’s a film, and the stature of the cast, including our own Jon Snow, Kit Harington, as her fiancé Roland Leighton, The Wire‘s Dominic West as her father, Emily Lloyd as her mother and Miranda Richardson as her mentor suggest that British headliners wanted to be part of her remarkable, very British story, even in a small, if gorgeous, art film like this one.
I first met Vera in the 1979 PBS Testament of Youth series, moved from there to her trilogy: Testament of Youth, Testament of Friendship and Testament of Experience and found a sister. A young activist in the 60’s, I understood her need to contribute, to be part of the crisis alongside those she loved, and as a woman fighting to function in a mostly-male profession, her battles as a woman were mine too.
So, if you share the political memories, ideal and goals of so many of us, Testament of Youth needs to be part of you, too. Go see it.
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Cynthia Samuels
Cynthia Samuels is a long-time blogger, writer, producer and Managing Editor. She has an extensive background online, on television and in print, with particular experience developing content for women, parents and families.
For the past nine years, that experience has been largely with bloggers, twitter and other social media, most recently at Care2's Causes Channels, which serve 20 million members (13 million when she joined) and cover 16 subject areas. In her three years at Care2 monthly page views grew tenfold, from 450,000 to 4 million.
She has been part a member of BlogHer since 2006 years and has spoken at several BlogHer conferences. Among her many other speaking appearances is Politics Online, Fem 2.0 Conference and several other Internet gatherings.
She’s also run blogger outreach for clients ranging from EchoDitto to To the Contrary. Earlier, she spent nearly four years with iVillage, the leading Internet site for women; her assignments included the design and supervision of the hugely popular Education Central, a sub-site of Parent Soup that was a soup-to-nuts parent toolkit on K-12 education, designed to support parents as advocates and supporters of their school-age kids. She also served as the iVillage partner for America Links Up, a major corporate Internet safety initiative for parents, ran Click! – the computer channel - and had a long stint as iVillage's Washington editor. In addition, she has developed parent content for Jim Henson Interactive and served as Children’s Book Editor for both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.
Before moving online, she had a long and distinguished career as a broadcast journalist, as senior national editor of National Public Radio, political and planning producer of NBC's Today Show (whose audience is 75% women) where she worked for nine years (and was also the primary producer on issues relating to child care, education, learning disabilities and child development), and as the first executive producer of Channel One, a daily news broadcast seen in 12,000 U.S. high schools. She has published a children’s book: It’s A Free Country, a Young Person’s Guide to Politics and Elections (Atheneum, 1988) and numerous children’s book reviews in the New York Times Book Review and Washington Post Book World.
A creator of online content since 1994, Samuels is a partner at The Cobblestone Team, LLC, is married to a doctor and recent law school graduate and has two grown sons who make video games, two amazing daughters-in-law and three adorable grandsons.
View all posts by Cynthia Samuels
4 thoughts on “WWI, Women and Jon Snow: Testament of Youth”
Sounds intriguing… I have to watch this… Great women from the pages of history..I feel a sense of pride in getting to read about them or even watch a documentary on them..Thanks for sharing
You’ll love the film but it’s a biopic not a documentary. Really lovely. So is the book btw.
I hadn’t heard of this film, but this is the second time I’ve seen Jon Snow and Kit Harington’s name together today. And I don’t know either actor. It’s almost as if the universe is whispering to me that I should Google them.
Mel,
Jon Snow is the name of the most gorgeous character on Game of Thrones and he is played by Kit Harrington. He may or may not have been killed off this season…. As you can see by the pic and trailer he’s quite a looker and has that agonized hero face SO down!
Now it’s a film, and the stature of the cast, including our own Jon Snow, Kit Harington, as her fiancé Roland Leighton, The Wire‘s Dominic West as her father, Emily Lloyd as her mother and Miranda Richardson as her mentor suggest that British headliners wanted to be part of her remarkable, very British story, even in a small, if gorgeous, art film like this one.
Sounds intriguing… I have to watch this… Great women from the pages of history..I feel a sense of pride in getting to read about them or even watch a documentary on them..Thanks for sharing
You’ll love the film but it’s a biopic not a documentary. Really lovely. So is the book btw.
I hadn’t heard of this film, but this is the second time I’ve seen Jon Snow and Kit Harington’s name together today. And I don’t know either actor. It’s almost as if the universe is whispering to me that I should Google them.
Mel,
Jon Snow is the name of the most gorgeous character on Game of Thrones and he is played by Kit Harrington. He may or may not have been killed off this season…. As you can see by the pic and trailer he’s quite a looker and has that agonized hero face SO down!