Donald Hankey was a writer who saw himself as a rsquo;student of human naturersquo; and peacetime Edwardian Britain as a society at war with itself. Wounded in a murderous daylight infantry charge near Ypres; Hankey began sending despatches to The Spectator from hospital in 1915. Trench life; wrote Hankey; taught that rsquo;the gentlemanrsquo; is a type not a social class. In one calm; humane; eyewitness report after another under the byline rsquo;A Student in Armsrsquo;; Hankey revealed how the civilian volunteers of Kitchenerrsquo;s Army; many with little stake in Edwardian society; put their betters to shame nonetheless. A runaway best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic; Hankeyrsquo;s prose vied in popularity with the poetry of Rupert Brooke. After he was killed on the Somme in another daylight infantry charge; Hankey joined Brooke as an international symbol of promise foregone. British propaganda backed publication in the-then neutral United States; yet at home Hankey had to dodge the censors to tell the truth as he saw it. This; the first scholarly biography; has been made possible by the recovery of Hankey papers long thought lost. Dr Davies traces the life of an Edwardian rebel from privileged birth into a banking dynasty that had owned slaves to spokesman for the ordinary man who; when put to the test of battle; proves to be not-so-ordinary. This study of Hankeyrsquo;s life; writing and vast audience - military and civilian - enlarges our understanding of how throughout the English-speaking world people managed to fight or endure a war for which little had prepared them.
#2938010 in eBooks 2016-03-13 2016-03-13File Name: B01CXM5YMG
Review
