George MacKay’s astonishing turn lifts 1917 from pyrotechnical marvel to a shattering emotional experience.
World War I
Film Review: “Frantz” — The Changeable Color of Grief
Frantz explores the complicated emotions generated by the aftermath of a catastrophic war.
Film Review: “Sunset Song” — Misogyny in the Highlands
I wanted to like Sunset Song, steeped as it is in Scottish history and scenery.
Book Review: Blaise Cendrars’ Brilliant WW I Memoir — Surviving the “Shambles” of War
The Bloody Hand stands alongside other autobiographical classics devoted to the First World War.
Film Review: “The Water Diviner” — Starts Out Well But Takes a Dive
Actor Russell Crowe’s directorial debut is visually gripping and very well acted — but its ending is disappointingly hokey.
Poetry Review: “The New Oxford Book of War Poetry” — The Duty to Run Mad
Editor Jon Stallworthy’s preference in this superb anthology is for poems that question, or provoke questions about, war.
Short Fuse Book Review and Interview: “The Lost History of 1914” — Almost the War That Wasn’t
In his exploration of history, Jack Beatty suggests that World War I, as we know it, was an improbable event.
Book Review: To End All Wars
“To End All Wars” embodies its themes –- the decline of the aristocracy, the rise of propaganda, the transformation of war-making, the heroism of resistance –- so skillfully in a dozen or so major characters and another dozen minor ones that this history of the First World War reads like a lively group biography.