Posted in Other fiction, Reading Reviewed at 12:00 on 16 February 2025
Hamish Hamilton, 2007, 253 p
This is the first book of Barker’s trilogy about alumni of the Slade Art School in the run-up to the Great War. I read the second one, Toby’s Room, before I realised it had this predecessor.
This book is more concerned with Paul Tarrant than Barker’s other two main protagonists, Elinor Brooke and Kit Neville. Paul used a small inheritance form his aunt to enrol at the Slade but the tutor, Henry Tonks, finds his work insipid and Paul begins to doubt his own talent. The slightly older Kit Neville has already had some success as an artist though. Elinor meanwhile has enough trouble dealing with being a woman in a traditionally male enterprise without both the men being attracted to her. She is initially not interested and Paul temporarily takes up with Teresa Halliday, one of the life models, who is escaping from a violent husband.
It is not until the Great War breaks out though, and its scope widens, that the book gets fully into its stride. Barker is clearly comfortable with that war as her subject (as witness her Regeneration trilogy.) Kit and Paul, turned down for war service, sign up to be ambulance drivers with the Belgian Army but are initially used as medical orderlies in field hospitals. Barker’s immersion in the minutiae of the war stands her in good stead here.
In this latter part of the novel a lot of the communication between Paul and Elinor consists of reproductions of their letters to each other. In one of these Elinor notes that the women in her circle keep quiet when men talk about the war (although they’ve not been in it) and compares that to the Iliad, where the girls whom Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel over “say nothing, not a word,” adding, “I don’t suppose men ever hear that silence.” This is a thought Barker would develop in her later Women of Troy books.
Barker’s writing is smooth, almost imperceptible. Accomplished as always.
Pedant’s corner:- Elinor’s hair style is inconsistently described as cropped, bell shaped, or tied back with a ribbon. The knee wound Paul sustains in a bombardment is also seemingly forgotten at times in later passages.
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Posted in Trips, War Memorials at 12:00 on 13 February 2025
Stirling‘s War Memorial is a stone obelisk on a hexagonal base located in a triangle at the junction of Albert Place and Corn Exchange Road.
From Corn Exchange Road:-


Close up:-

Dedications:-

Name plaques:-


Unveiling infoprmation:-


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Posted in War Memorials at 12:00 on 10 February 2025
The hall was built as a memorial to the employees of Tullis Russell & Company who died in the Great War.
An external plaque was unveiled there in November 2023 recording that fact:-

I posted about the 252 Hall before, here.
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Posted in War Memorials at 12:00 on 8 February 2025
The memorial, an obelisk embossed with a sword above a square plinth, was originally dedicated for the Great War, the dead of which it commemorated, and stands on a hill with a view down Cowdenbeath’s High Street. There is also a dedication to those who fell in the Second Word War but their names are on a separate memorial in the town.
Cowdenbeath Great War Memorial South Aspect. Names: Adams – Davidson:-

East Aspect. Names: Ferguson – Lister:-

North Aspect. Names: Lockhart – Scott. Cowdenbeath High Street behind:-

West aspect. Names: Scott – Young:-

A Great War 100th Anniversary Bench and Soldier lies at the end of Cowdenbeath High Street below the hill where the War memorial stands:-

I featured Cowdenbeath’s Second World War memorial here but took this photo of it with added Great War soldier outline and Great War anniversary bench just after I photographed the above:-

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Posted in War Memorials at 12:00 on 3 February 2025
Plaque dedicated to the men of St John’s Kirk:-

Burma Star Association flag and plaque. The plaque bears the Kohima Epitaph:-

Upper memorial for the Scottish Area Women’s Royal Army Corps and lower one for the Royal Army Service Corps in both wars:-

Parachute Regiment and British Special Airborne Forces Memorial:-

Tapestry Memorial to 51st Highland Division:-

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Posted in War Memorials at 12:00 on 1 February 2025
War Memorial alcove, St John’s Kirk, Perth:-

Great War Memorial (to left above):-

Below the memorial are two Rolls of Honour. The first below takes in Perthshire and also covers World War 2 as may the second:-


Great War Memorial to men connected with St John’s East Parish Church:-

Masonic Great War Memorial:-

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Posted in Dumbarton, War Memorials at 12:00 on 15 January 2025
The entrance to Dumbarton Castle is up a flight of stairs which has a left turn on the way up. On the wall facing you as you turn is this War Memorial dedicated to the officers and men of the 9th Battalion (Dunbartonshire,) Princess Louise’s Argyll and Sutherland Higlanders:-

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Posted in Trips, War Memorials at 12:00 on 9 January 2025
An arch with a cross in the gap, lanterns to either side.
I have featured this memorial before but it was partly obscured by a street fair then. In September 2023 it wasn’t.

Great War Dedication and names:-

World War 2 Dedication and names. Also on pavement below the inscription, “220 miles to Ypres”:-

This time were able to get into the street behind the memorial where there was an assortment of wreaths:-

The plaque to the right above is a Victoria Cross commemoration. Lt Colonel Philip Bent, Leicestershire Regiment, 1/10/1917:-

Close up on tributes to left above:-

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Posted in Architecture, Trips, War Memorials at 20:30 on 7 January 2025
The previous three times we visited Alcester I had noticed this hall sited beyond the church but hadn’t looked at the plaque on its wall.


It was purchased from the owner and rededicated as a War Memorial in 1919:-

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Posted in Trips, War Memorials at 12:00 on 7 January 2025
The Church can be seen in this post on Alcester I made in 2012. We visited the town again on our way back up from Bath. This time we went inside the church.
Chancel and Altar:-

Emrys-Jones Memorial stained glass window:-

Information about the window:-

War Memorial plaque to the men of Alcester and Oversley, erected 1951:-

Individual memorial to Arthur Boobbyer Jephcott who fell at Pozières, 4/8/1916, aged 20:-

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