...LONDON: THE SWINGING CITY Before Affluence and After Austerity SLIDE: London smog 1953 In the mid-1960s, London was the place to be. ‘Fifteen years earlier, few would have predicted that London would soon play host to the most swinging ball of the century’ (Sandbrook, 2006b)[i] In fact Hardy Amies had had a similar opinion when reflecting on the legacy of the Festival of Britain in 1951; nothing in it signalled the onslaught of the Swinging Sixties, making particular reference to the Britishness of design in the shape of Mary Quant and her artistic contemporaries which would have enormous further global impact (Banham & Hillier 1976)[ii]. In retrospect it is understandable; the gloomy and restrictive situation of the country locked in the interminable shackle of debt from which it seemed almost impossible to free itself, gave absolutely no hint at the transformation to come. Historical descriptions of Britain in the 1950s are invariably depressing (Akhtar & Humphries, 2001; Marr, 2007; Kynaston 2008; Sandbrook, 2006ab; Tarrant, 1990; White, 2008)[iii]. The word that tends to sum up these accounts is ‘grey’. Cyril Connolly, the writer and critic wrote in 1947 after the worst winter since records began followed by the worst flooding, that the British people had been reduced to ‘a neuter class …with [ ] drab clothes … - a careworn people … in their shabby raincoats, under a sky permanently dull and lowering like a metal dish-cover.’ (Gardiner, 1999:35)[iv] SLIDE: London...
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...LONDON: THE SWINGING CITY Before Affluence and After Austerity SLIDE: London smog 1953 In the mid-1960s, London was the place to be. ‘Fifteen years earlier, few would have predicted that London would soon play host to the most swinging ball of the century’ (Sandbrook, 2006b)[i] In fact Hardy Amies had had a similar opinion when reflecting on the legacy of the Festival of Britain in 1951; nothing in it signalled the onslaught of the Swinging Sixties, making particular reference to the Britishness of design in the shape of Mary Quant and her artistic contemporaries which would have enormous further global impact (Banham & Hillier 1976)[ii]. In retrospect it is understandable; the gloomy and restrictive situation of the country locked in the interminable shackle of debt from which it seemed almost impossible to free itself, gave absolutely no hint at the transformation to come. Historical descriptions of Britain in the 1950s are invariably depressing (Akhtar & Humphries, 2001; Marr, 2007; Kynaston 2008; Sandbrook, 2006ab; Tarrant, 1990; White, 2008)[iii]. The word that tends to sum up these accounts is ‘grey’. Cyril Connolly, the writer and critic wrote in 1947 after the worst winter since records began followed by the worst flooding, that the British people had been reduced to ‘a neuter class …with [ ] drab clothes … - a careworn people … in their shabby raincoats, under a sky permanently dull and lowering like a metal dish-cover.’ (Gardiner, 1999:35)[iv] SLIDE: London...
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...Sharon Cortes COS 144 Mrs. McClellan Vidal Sassoon Vidal Sassoon was born January 17, 1928 in Hammersmith, United Kingdom. In his early life Vidal attended Essendine Road Primary School. His father left his mother when he was just a small child , his mother could not take care of him and his brother so they were placed in an orphanage were he spent seven years. Vidal left school at the age of 14 and worked as a messanger. At the age of 17, he became the youngest member of the 43 Group, a jewish veterans underground organization. In 1948, at the age of 20 Vidal joined the Haganah and fought in the Arab-Israeli War. Vidal Sassoon was married several times, in 1956 he married his first wife Elaine Wood and after just 2 years they divorced. In 1967 he married his second wife, actress Beverly Adams. Sassoon and Adams had 3 children together 2 daughters Catya born 1968 and died in 2002 of a drug overdose, and Eden Sassoon born January 17, 1970. One son Elan Benvidal date of birth is unknown. They also adopted a son name David who was born in 1972. Vidal married his third wife Jeanette Hartford-Davis in 1983. In 1992 Sassoon married for a fourth and final time to Rhonda “Ronnie” Holbrook. Sassoon’s career took off after he trained under Raymond Bessone in his salon in Mayfair. Sassoon opened his first salon in 1954, in London; his first customer was singer/actress Georgia Brown. His work included the geometric perm and the “Nancy Kwan” hairstyles. These hairstyles relied on dark...
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...born in Oswestry on 18th March 1893. After school, he became a teaching assistant and in 1913 went to France for two years to work as a language tutor. In 1915 he returned to England to enlist in the army and was commissioned into the Manchester Regiment. After spending the remainder of the year training in England, he left for the western front early in January 1917. He was diagnosed with shellshock after experiencing heavy fighting and was evacuated to England to recover at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh in June. Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum est were written in 1917, during Owen’s time at Craiglockhart. Here, he was able to write some of his best work. He also met the poet Siegfried Sassoon here, who was already a well-established poet. Sassoon agreed to look over Owen's poems, gave him encouragement and introduced him to literary figures such as Robert Graves. Owen conveys his feelings towards the war through the many poems he wrote, especially while being treated at Craiglockhart. His poems give the reader a sense of what it was like to be a militant during conflict. His poetry is characterised by powerful descriptions of the conditions faced by soldiers in the trenches. His poems are sometimes violent and realistic, challenging earlier poetry which communicated a pro-war message. His first-hand experience of war is one reason why there was such a shift in the attitude towards war. He returned to France in August 1918 and in October was awarded the...
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...The book Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon covers about the English/ French war. The book is organized by chronologically but Siegfried Sassoon does jump around telling about life in the war. Siegfried Sassoon is a young man in army school for officers. He has a servant, whose name is Flook and sort of privileged. Flook is India. He called the school a holiday for officers taught to kill (France). Infantry Officer George Sherston nick name Kangaroo, has no idea how he got it. He is a bomber; he gets to blows stuff up and goes into WW1. The enemy at the time is Germany. Kangaroo is titled 2nd lt. in year 1916. 18 months approx. fought in server locations, they included Somme- isle of Man-New Zealand-England France. He was all over and he wanted to be a hero and get glory for it. Fighting the Germans, they rode horses. He really did not want to kill, but you had to in self-defense due to he was on the front line. Front line was a harsh one, one loses humanities. (a no man’s land.) Very detailed images of the battle field of bombs, death, gun fires and thankful for being alive. They would recover tools, weapons from No man’s land. That is the French front and is very stressful. Wet weather gave him sore feet and trench mouth. They would use candles for light. He goes into the war obedient, the reality is for glory and he is disillusioned. Men used canaries’ when they dug tunnels because if a bird died they knew it was poison. War made him want to kill after seeing...
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...Explore the ways in which the three texts present the suffering of soldiers in the war. World War One is known as “the war to end all wars”[1]. The war cultured “extreme suffering” which inspired many writers. The war also aided the advancement of attitudes towards the emotionality of men. Individual suffering is manipulated to intensify the pain by isolating singular characters. Sacrifices of the men force the reader into an uncomfortable atmosphere. Sebastian Faulks’ Bildungsroman Birdsong highlights the suffering of individual to understate that of the masses. Regeneration, written by Pat Barker in 1991, uses factual occurrences of Sassoon and Owen’s lives in Craiglockhart to detail historic experiences of suffering. The poetry features both pro and anti-war perspectives from historical figures featured within Regeneration. Birdsong emotively persuades readers that individual anguish has detrimental effects on soldier’s lives intensifying their suffering. The texts use third person narrative to create emotive circumstances which manipulate the reader into understanding the suffering as either mass or individual. The writers’ portrayal of individual suffering was the most poignant compared to the subversion of widespread suffering. The texts expose the stigmatization of physical disability as a cause of individual suffering. Historically, the dependence of disabled life reflects the burden faced by soldiers of returning to normality. Wilfred Owen’s poem Disabled explores the...
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...The First World War, the war to end all wars, stretched from 1914 to 1918 and saw over 60 000 Australian soldiers killed and approximately 150 000 wounded, gassed or taken prisoner. Poetry was an outlet for writers to express their views about the war. It was also a common source of propaganda. The Hero, written in 1918 by Siegfried Sassoon portrays a senior officer informing a soldier’s mother about his recent death. The senior officer speaks gallant lies of the soldier’s death to his mother in attempt to lessen her sorrow. Through the use of both sentimental and hostile diction and irony, Sassoon challenges our notions of heroic sacrifice and constructs a brutal and dehumanizing representation of war as well. Throughout this Speech, I will show how Sassoon’s clear use of structure, irony and diction assists him in his endeavour to privilege this representation. The poem is written in very clear iambic pentameter. The simplicity of the overall rhyming scheme emphasises the...
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...In their confusion, they begin to long for things that are no longer a part of them. The poem “Dreamers”, written by Siegfried Sassoon, describes that “Soldiers are dreamers; when the gun begin/ They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives” (7-8). When the gunshots began, they are awaken into reality which creates the desire of comfortable pasts that are no longer present. One’s normality becomes nonexistent and the they start to fall apart by predicting their own fate. The only thing that they could do is to dream and reside in their unrealistic views of returning home. Likewise, in Image A, it flaunts pictures of empty cookie cutters, and cookies that are fully in shape next to each other. This demonstrates that there are ultimately two sides: the past and the present, which relates to “Dreamers.” The cookie cutters are the ones that shape the cookies in various...
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...Independent study: Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Rear Guard” Groping along the tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air. Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know, A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; And he, exploring fifty feet below The rosy gloom of battle overhead. Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug, And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug. "I'm looking for headquarters." No reply. "God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep.) "Get up and guide me through this stinking place." Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, And flashed his beam across the livid face Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore Agony dying hard ten days before; And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound. Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair ...
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...In relation to World War One poetry, “Dead Man’s Dump” by Isaac Rosenberg and “Attack” by Siegfried Sassoon, I agree that thematic concerns are developed through the extensive use of symbolism and imagery. A poet is an artist and the poetry he writes is his art. The words he uses to write them, however, are the ever so essential paint brushes and tools used to create art. Through their meticulous choice of words, Rosenberg and Sassoon effectively conveyed their outlook on the concept of way and helped myself, the reader, to understand the destructive nature of war. Thus, the use of imagery and symbolism is imperative in order for the reader to fully understand their argument. “Dead Man’s Dump” follows the journey of a limber navigating through a scene of horror littered with “sprawled dead.” One of the key themes developed in “Dead Man’s Dump” through the use of symbolism and imagery is the idea of war stripping an individual of any power or control. War is symbolically depicted as a “shrieking pyre” that the soldiers were “flung on” to. This is a direct metaphor towards war being a ‘dead man’s dump’ and helps us understand that Rosenberg perceives war as a funeral pyre because war instigates death and the men who are drafted in war might as well be “flung on to a shrieking pyre.” The limber that is carrying the “rusty freight” or barbed wires is embodied as “many crowns of thorns… stuck out… over the shattered track/ Upon our brothers dear.” This religious allusion is representative...
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...characters' observations there is most definitely a condemnation of well known pacifists like Bertrand Russell and Ottoline Morrell. Finally, we may argue that Regeneration is not an anti-war novel because it contains no discussion or evaluation of the aims and purposes of war; it only deals with the effects of war, and therefore cannot be said to be firmly positioned in one camp or the other. There seems, however, to be more evidence supporting the position that Regeneration is an anti-war novel. Barker offers realistic detail of many horrible war scenes, dwelling upon the destruction that war wreaks upon men's minds. These details comprise a large portion of the novel. Furthermore, Sassoon, the novel's hero, rejects all justification for such a high amount of human suffering. Barker presents Sassoon as a likable, sympathetic character who is perfectly clear and reasonable; it seems natural for us to accept his judgments as sound. Perhaps most important, the protagonist of the novel, Rivers, ends up questioning his traditional belief in duty at all costs. Yealland does his duty to "cure" patients, but clearly the physical and emotional cost of his alleged cure is too high. Rivers cannot help concluding that the complete control over human lives, which is brought to the extreme in wartime, is harmful to everyone. When does the motif of...
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...Even though "these men are worth/ Your tears" (Owen, "Apologia Pro" 35-36) relatives of the soldiers fail to acknowledge the hell in which "we fight" (Sassoon 7) and the horrid places "we're killed" (8) by euphemistically referring to death in action as "retir[ing]" (9). Similarly, national governments do not know how to appropriately memorialise the souls of the deceased as they immortalise their dead through trivial "decorations" (Sassoon 3) which only pay homage to their actions during WWI and not their personalities...
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...attack and to get reinforcements and rest. 2 weeks behind the lines for training, receiving reinforcements and to get rest. Medical support Advanced medical support like anaesthetics and morphine were available to soldiers who were wounded which reduced the amount of suffering. Still 1 in 3 British casualties died because of the lack of antibiotics and blood transfusion. Wilfred Owen He was a World War 1 soldier and wrote poems about the war. When he first went to war he experienced bad things and was declared unfit to fight due to shellshock. He was sent to Edinburgh for treatment from a psychiatrist. He wrote poetry whilst he was there. Soon afterwards, a better-known poet called Siegfried Sassoon came to the hospital as a patient and Owen became friends with him. Sassoon helped Owen to improve...
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...Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England www.penguin.com First published by Viking 1991 Published in Penguin Books 1992 Reissued in this edition 2007 I Copyright © Pat Barker, 1991 All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted The publishers wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: George Sassoon for Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘The Rear-Guard’, ‘The General’, ‘To the...
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...English Literature, Key Poems List Thomas Hardy: Men Who March Away - Volunteers marching to war tell those who watch them pass by of their faith in the justice of their cause. Thomas Hardy: In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’ - The routines of life and love continue during conflict, and will continue long after it is over. Rupert Brooke: Peace - This sonnet is an expression of thanks for being able to respond to the call to arms and leave behind the stale and empty concerns of civilian life. Rupert Brooke: The Dead - Celebrates those who have given their lives. The sacrifice of the lowliest of them has given the world honour and nobility. Rupert Brooke: The Soldier - A solider reflects that, should he die, his grave will become a little piece of England in a foreign country. Herbert Asquith: The Volunteer - Celebrates a city clerk whose dreams of military glory have been fulfilled. His death in battle is rewarded with a place alongside the heroes of the Battle of Agincourt. Julian Grenfell: Into Battle - Celebrates spring and moves on to describe the validity of the warrior, whose sacrifice will be rewarded. Nature and the solider are at one and this gives him peace and a sense of destiny. John McCrae: In Flanders Fields - The dead, lying beneath ground covered with poppies, urge the living to continue the struggle against the enemy. Charles Sorley: All the Hills and Vales Along - Addressing men marching past, the poet urges them to sing while...
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