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The Great Silence (2009)

by Juliet Nicolson(Favorite Author)

3.82 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0719562562 (ISBN13: 9780719562563)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

John Murray

review 1: There were a lot of interesting things in this book, but I felt it was poorly written. For me, there were too many little anecdotes about people or events that weren't tied in with anything else. However, parts of it were fascinating. I especially valued the parts about Harold Gillies and his pioneering plastic surgery work. I've read a little about the "gueules cassees" as the French call the soldiers whose faces were so horribly damaged, but I didn't know much about the reconstructive work that was done on them. I was also very interested in the account of the idea for the 2 minute silence and the history of the Cenotaph.
review 2: Nicolson follows the British people (using a scattering of representatives—servants, aristocrats, veterans, doctors, women... more) to look at the seismic shift in the UK in the two years following World War I (the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier marks the endpoint of the book). She does a very good job capturing a time when everyone was still shell-shocked by a horrible war, attempting to put themselves and their country back together and not sure quite what shape it was (political questions such as Irish independence, workers' rights and women's rights run through the book). Makes a good book-end of the era with The Perfect Summer, which looks at the period before the war (Silence is better, because it has so much more drama to work with). less

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