Description
Invited paper give at Freedom of Speech conference, U of Cambridge.In the fifteen-volume novel-cycle, A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, Henry Williamson offers a portrayal of family life in England in the first half of the twentieth century. It includes a rereading or alternative history of both wars; four volumes set in the battlefields and home front of World War One, and a further three volumes depicting life in rural England during World War Two. This counter-history and its specific historical negations are in part informed by a fascist interpretation of that period’s events, but also by a concern to reject the idea of enmity (especially with Germany). It was also driven by an impassioned sense of truth telling; this was a history, Williamson felt, that wasn’t being told or was even being actively suppressed in post-war Britain. Readers of Williamson’s saga that I know, members of the literary society constituted in the author’s name, respond to aspects of this counter-history with nervousness or embarrassment. However, they also embrace key planks of its thesis; in particular its focus upon the corroding effects of internal strife within families, and the negative effects on personality of fear. This includes a central attention to the economy of fear and courage in war, linked for many readers to an essential interest in how frontline soldiers survived the horrors of the trenches. Members of the literary society speculate at length on whether they would have overcome their fears in such circumstances. But more importantly, they wonder how their fathers, uncles or grandfathers did so. All of these questions are supercharged by the simulated experiences of war, including intense feelings of both fear and courage that many claim to have had as a result of reading the novels.
| Period | 2020 |
|---|---|
| Held at | University of Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| Degree of Recognition | International |