Century Magazine

Not For Turning

March 28th to April 3rd 1916

The Pleasures Of Paranoia

May 23rd to May 29th 1916

I cannot pray

AFTER THE HORROR of the Quintinshill train crash in Scotland the previous week which had seen the deaths of 214 soldiers, en route to Gallipoli, the British might have been forgiven for feeling they were owed a bit of good luck in the days which followed. If so, they were to be disappointed. At 11.15am…

A bombast and a bully

Here was the toxic reality of British politics in late 1916: a millionaire demagogue playing politics with a great…

Beelzebub

What is it about men? And what was it about the British?

Don’t Mess With Mimi

WAS ALL QUIET on the Western Front? That was the question.

Toujours la meme chose

The tremendous exertion of will and firepower which had been launched by the British the previous week at Neuve Chapelle seemed to have foundered. This was no ignominious defeat, but there was no breakout either — no great advances which sent the Germans scurrying into retreat across open…

Common clay

NEWS OF THE execution of Edith Cavell dominated the week’s news in the west. All the ingredients of martyrology were there — an undefended woman, of attested faith and almost inhuman courage, felled by a volley of rifle fire in a German shooting range in occupied Brussels.

Always personal

WHAT IS TRAGEDY IF it is not personal? It engulfed Vera Brittain this week and, ever afterwards, her life was marked out by loss.

Her diary now chronicled the pathology of her suffering following news of Roland Leighton’s death in France just before Christmas: intense grief…