“Long Shadows” were the effects of debilitating injuries and what was worse, amputations, suffered by men who had fought in World War 1. The cheerful approach of ‘Home by Christmas’ was drowned within a year in Flanders mud, or at sea. They, and their families, were thought lucky to have survived. The inter-war years were economically hard. Any amputee or disabled man had no chance of a job. What hope was there?
This distress was explored in a semi-autographical book, “Long Shadows”, written by a Hull born former journalist, George Warburton Sizer, in collaboration with Vera Brittain. When the book was published in 1958, she had a high reputation for her writing on the effects of war, on pacificism and the need for social change. Sizer was unknown. He wrote the account of how men and their families suffered, highlighting the distress for their wives. Vera Brittain’s contribution was the preface and the last chapter- how the public should respond in order to end these injustices.
Alan Deighton will discuss how this partnership developed; and the need for society to recognise the physical and psychological aftermath of war and violence. Without action on this, injustices continue. The power of Brittain’s arguments to prevent war was, and is, the prevailing message.
Dr. Alan Deighton taught medieval German literature at Hull University, with additional periods of lecturing at the University of KwaZulu in South Africa and at the University of Amsterdam. More recently he has researched and lectured on unusual people in Hull’s history.
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