Britten, Vera

From a wealthy family. She studied English literature at Somerville College, Oxford University . She left school in the summer of 1915, voluntarily going to work as a nurse in hospitals in France and the UK. Her brother, musician Edward Britten , fiance and two closest friends died on the fronts of the First World War - in Italy, France, Flanders. After the war, she became friends with a novice, like she, the writer Winifred Holtby, the two of them appeared on the London literary scene. In 1923, Britten debuted the novel Dark Times.

In 1925, she married political scientist and philosopher . Their son John became an artist, wrote a book about the parental family (1987). Daughter, Baroness is a prominent scientist, a politician of the liberal-democratic direction, was the Minister of Labor in the Labor Government, is a member of the Privy Council of Great Britain .

The greatest success for the writer was brought by the autobiographical book about the war years, “ ” (1933), which was continued later by “Testaments of friendship” (1940, about Winifred Holtby) and “Testaments of experience” (1957). The next volume, The Covenants of Faith (or the Covenants of Time), was never completed.

Since the 1920s, Britten has been a regular speaker at the League of Nations , has made anti-war statements, including even during World War II . Since the 1930s, has been constantly published in the pacifist journal Peace News . In 1945, her name was included by the Nazis in the those who should be immediately destroyed when the German troops captured Britain.

Before her death, she bequeathed to dispel her ashes in Italy, at the grave of her brother, who died in the battle of Asiago . Daughter fulfilled the maternal covenant.

• 1923 - The Dark Tide
• 1929 - Halcyon: Or, The Future of Monogamy (essay, To-day and To-morrow pamphlet series)
• 1933 - Testament of Youth
• 1936 - Honorable Estate (a novel with elements of autobiography)
• 1940 - Testament of Friendship
• 1941 - England's hour (letters and articles of the beginning of the Second World War)
• 1944 - Massacre by Bombing
• 1957 - Testament of Experience
• 1960 - The women at Oxford; a fragment of history
• 1981 - Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary, 1913-1917 (diary)
• 1985 - Britt and Holtby articles : Testament of a generation
• 1988 - Testament of a peace lover (pacifist articles and speeches)

Book Britten repeatedly reprinted. The precepts of adolescence , which have survived to 10 reissues in Great Britain and the USA, were screened by BBC Two television in 1979, and the role of Britten was played by Cheryl Campbell.

In 1980, the British choreographer Kenneth Macmillan put Gloria ballet on Pulenk’s music, based on the libretto of the Britten Youth Covenants (her youth poems Military Generation: Ave were printed in the program of the play shown in Covent Garden ).

In 1998, the correspondence of Britten from the First World War was published in the Letters of the Lost Generation volume, they became the basis of the BBC Radio 4 series of radio programs, Amanda Ruth and Rupert Graves read the letters.

New volume of military correspondence and poems Britten Because you do not have appeared in 2008. In the same year, the television film “The Love and War of One Woman” was released on the British screens, the role of Britten played by Kathryn Manners.

In 2009, it was announced the start of filming a new film based on Britten’s autobiographical book ^[3] , her role was intended for young Irish actress Sirshe Ronan , then it was transferred to Alicia Vikander . The painting “The Testaments of Youth” was published in 2014 (in the Russian box office, the name was changed to “ Memories of the Future ”).

Several tablets in memory of Faith Britten are placed on houses related to her life in London, etc.

The writer's archives are at McMaster University, Hamilton , and Somerville College , Oxford .

• Kennard JE Vera Brittain & Winifred Holtby: a working partnership . Hanover: University Press of New England, 1989
• Tylee C. The Great War and Women's Consciousness: Images of Militarism and Womanhood in Women's Writings 1914-64 . Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990
• Berry P., Bostridge M. Vera Brittain: A Life . Chatto & Windus, 1995 (repr.: Pimlico, 1996, Virago 2001, 2008)
• Gorham D. Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life . University of Toronto Press, 2000.
• Stewart V. Women's Autobiography: War and Trauma . Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 (ch. I)

• Biography, photos
• Vera Britten's collection in the digital archive “The Poetry of the First World War”
• Biography and selected anti-war texts on the Peace Pledge Union website
• On the IMDB website