BOOK, FILM AND NOW THE PLAY..
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Description
Every now and then among the tribute band acts and musical re-runs that keep our local theaters ticking over we get something special and so it was at Darlington Civic Theatre last November (I've just come across my play flyer). Pat Barker's: Regeneration was the first of what is now known as the; Regeneration Trilogy, the third of which - The Ghost Road won the Booker Prize in 1995. The opening novel in the series was published in 1991, I bought my copy a few years later on moving to a new home a few miles from where Pat Barker grew-up in Thornaby-on-Tees. So when I noticed that the play of the book was coming to Darlo, I booked a ticket and enjoyed a good night at the theatre. Somehow the light shines through the gloom... "I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it" So wrote Siegfried Sassoon, in a letter to The Times in July 1917. Many hundreds of thousands of men met futile horrible death over the following sixteen months before the killing stopped. For his prescience Siegfried Sassoon was incarcerated in Craiglockhart Asylum in Edinburgh and this provides much of the plot-line of Regeneration. 2014 has been a year worthy of reflection on the First World War, I have been touched by it, both my Grandfathers fought in it, only one survived it. I want to understand how these things can happen and found Mark Bostridge's book very good and socially relevant "The Fateful Year: England in 1914". And the magisterial work of scholarship by Margaret MacMillan: "The War That Ended Peace", is easily the best reading I have yet come across about the first world war. Meanwhile The Guns Of August by Barbara Tuchman's great classic sits waiting attention. My interim thoughts are that there is nothing so dangerous to the well-being of mankind, than government. -
Owner
summonedbyfells -
Source
Flickr (Flickr) -
License
What does this mean? Attribution License
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Further information
Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/8521690@N02/15969857938/
Resource type: Image
Added by: Simon Cotterill
Last modified: 7 years, 3 months ago
Viewed: 714 times
Picture Taken: Unknown -
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