Letters from a lost generation

To correct my last post - it's not true that there is nothing amiss in these letters and diaries. There is detail, often shocking, of wounds and incidents, like Mairi Chisholm's description of looking in a man's coat pocket for his identity tag and finding someone else's brains. There are expressions of surprise that the writers have coped.

I have come back to Vera Brittain, in the letters between her, her brother and three of his friends, one her fiance (Letters from a Lost Generation, ed. Bishop and Bostridge 1998). Her letters are full of a pain so personal that, if I were feeling it, I could not write it, if I could write it I could not express it clearly, and if I could express it I would not be comfortable sharing it with the world.

She lets you very close, in a way that not everyone can, or wants to.