Next Meeting: Friday 19 March 2010
(7.30 start for Trench Diary prize-giving - see below.)
Dr Jean Moorcroft Wilson: Isaac Rosenberg - The Making of a Great War Poet
Isaac Rosenberg is one of the greatest of the First World War poets, yet not nearly so well known as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Rosenberg died on the Western Front in 1918 aged only twenty-seven, his tragic early death resembling that of many other well-known poets of that conflict. But he differed from the majority of Great War poets in almost every other respect: race, class, education, upbringing, experience and technique. He was a skilled painter as well as a brilliant poet. The son of impoverished immigrant Russian Jews, he served as a private in the army and his perspective on the trenches is quite different from the other, mainly officer, poets, allowing the voice of the 'poor bloody Tommy' to be eloquently heard. This talk will trace Rosenberg's life and work from his childhood in Bristol and the East End of London; his time at the Slade School of Art and friendship with David Bomberg, Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer and C.R.W. Nevinson among others; his introduction to Edward Marsh and his circle of Georgian establishment poets; his visit to Cape Town, where he was staying when war broke out in August 1914 and where he fell in love with the divorced wife of South Africa's future Prime Minister; to his harrowing experiences and his death near Arras on 1st April 1918.
Dr Jean Moorcroft Wilson is a lecturer at Birkbeck College, London. She has written acclaimed biographies of Siegfried Sassoon and Charles Hamilton Sorley, which have become standard works in First World War literature. Her recent biography of Isaac Rosenberg was short-listed for the Duff Cooper Biography and History Prize. She is married to the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf.
February Meeting Report
Kitchener's Lost Boys: From the Playing Fields to the Killing Fields.
John Oakes, who had two careers, first in the RAF, and later in teaching, is well-placed to consider the motivations of adolescents when volunteering for military service. WW1 is of course well-known for the ease with which huge numbers of under-18s entered the British Army, but as John showed, this was far from being a new phenomenon. The Territorial Force (founded in 1908) had a quarter of a million men by 1914, and it was estimated that 17,000 were under-18. Going back further, no less a person than FM Sir William Robertson was able to enlist (in 1877) when still three months underage.
With the outbreak of war in 1914, the country set about recruiting a million men, a hundred thousand immediately. In the first week of September some 33,000 volunteered, the same as the annual rate in peacetime. The resulting chaos in recruiting stations made it easy for boys to add a year or more to their age, and the recruiters and doctors were not too worried!
By July 1916 the Army consisted of 70 divisions and needed over 25,000 recruits per week. Conscription had just come into operation, but even this did not prevent juvenile enlistment. Richard van Emden has estimated that there were at least 25,000 such soldiers, but John feels that the true figure was 360,000! He also drew and interesting comparison with child soldiers in Africa at the present time: there may be over 300,000 of them).
Naturally, for many youngsters the war offered an escape from broken families and poverty. But the military life also offered a chance for training, status and a sense of purpose. A generation had grown up under the influence of imperialist thinking, and popular literature (eg. boys' magazines like "The Magnet") encouraged a taste for adventure. Huge numbers of boys joined organisations like the Scouts or the Boys' Brigade. Many must have been influenced by the widespread theme of invasion (first by France, later Germany) in books, plays and magazines.
The public schools played their part through the Officer Training Corps, and it was a remarkable fact that 516 Old Harrovians were killed in the war, a rate of one every three days.
A fascinating talk very well delivered and most-thought-provoking.
Newsletter Quiz
The answer to quiz 201 was "Admiral Graf Spee". Barry Cobb won and sets quiz 202: Who were the first and last recipients of the VC during WW1?
Trench Diary Prize-Giving
As previously announced, we are presenting prizes for this project, in which the St George's School Year Nine pupils produce a "trench diary" imagining themselves as soldiers on the Western Front. David Waters of the History Department has selected for us the ten best of these, and we have chosen the top three to receive special prizes at tonight's meeting. (The other seven will get "highly commended" certificates). In order to accommodate this, the meeting will start at 7.30pm, with our guest speaker starting around 8.00pm as usual. We expect a number of pupils who are studying the war poets to remain to hear the talk. We are delighted to be developing our relationship with the school in this way, and are sure this will be a very special evening.
Branch Diary
23 April: The British Naval Staff in WW1: Just Cabbage Heads? - Dr Nicholas Black
4 June: English Rural Communities in WW1 - Prof. Keith Grieves
9 July: Muirhead Bone: Artist & Patron - Sylvester Bone
3 September: AGM & Members' Evening
8 October: Women in the War Zone: Hospital Service in WW1 - Anne Powell
12 November: St Eloi: Village of the Craters - Christopher John
10 December: The Austro-Hungarian Conflict in 1914 - Prof. Mark Cornwall
Venue: Room SP101, 1st Floor, Sports Hall, St George's School, Sun Lane, Harpenden, AL5 4EY. Doors open 7.30pm, 8.00pm start. Requested donation min. £3.00. Tea, coffee & biscuits at half time.
