The Faber Book of Reportage

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It is history these accounts offer, but history deprived of generalizations. The writers are strangers to omniscience. The varnish of interpretation has been removed so we can see people clearly, as they originally were – gazing incredulously at what was, for that moment, the newest thing that had ever happened to them. I love the irony of Chateaubriand's observation here. The United States would live with this contradiction for 73 more years. Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, 1791, on fleeing the French Revolution and coming to the United States.

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Despite those opening and closing chapters, you can tell that this is a book published in Britain, with a British editor. The reports include a disproportionate number of incidents that either occur in Britain or at least involve British people in other countries. There will always be disagreement over the selection of material for a collection like this, but in my opinion there’s also an over-concentration on descriptions of wartime events. WW2 takes up an enormous section, but many other wars are included as well. Lastly, and possibly as a consequence of the emphasis on WW2, almost half the statements in the book are taken from the 20th century. I absolutely loved this book. The variety of events covered in these accounts, and the "real" feeling that they had to them kept me engaged throughout the entire book. The majority of events did cover major battles, military engagements, and lives of soldiers, but even among those, the vast differences in wars across generations and countries was fascinating to read. John Carey is a British literary critic and retired emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has twice chaired the Man Booker Prize judging panel and is chief book reviewer for the London Sunday Times and appears in radio and TV programs such as Saturday Review and Newsnight Review. A piece from Robert Graves, from 1915, described the incredible courage of a “tender-hearted lance-corporal named Baxter”, who walked out on his own into No-Man’s Land on the Western Front, waving a handkerchief, to go to a wounded soldier trapped close to the German lines. Initially the Germans fired at him but eventually they let him come on. Graves recommended Baxter for the Victoria Cross, but “the authorities thought it worth no more than a Distinguished Conduct Medal.” The author, Samuel Gridley Howe, was a leading America educator, and a pioneer in the education of blind and handicapped children.A suffragette (the Lady Constance Lytton, disguised as a lower-class woman) is force-fed during a hunger strike in Walton Gaol in 1910: Laying in her own vomit afterwards, exhausted and “quite helpless”, Lytton writes, “Before long I heard the sounds of the forced feeding in the next cell to mine. It was almost more than I could bear, it was Elaine Howey, I was sure. When the ghastly process was all over and all quiet, I tapped on the wall and called out at the top of my voice, which wasn't much just then, 'No surrender,' and there came the answer past any doubt in Elaine's voice, 'No surrender.'" Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Imperial family shot 1918 - not sure why they had to shoot the doctor, the maid and 2 waiters also? Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-01-29 16:16:26 Associated-names Carey, John, 1934- Autocrop_version 0.0.5_books-20210916-0.1 Boxid IA40333316 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier I was surprised how many were by or about subjects of England, but that says something about the prominence of that country in world history.

The Faber book of reportage : Free Download, Borrow, and The Faber book of reportage : Free Download, Borrow, and

The book is pristine and free of any defects, in the same condition as when it was first newly published.What is it with the British and some of their euphemisms for being dead? Anyone for "'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!” And here’s one from the book.