Vera Mary Brittain (1893 – 1970) is one of the twentieth century’s most significant literary and political figures.  She wrote 29 books, including 5 novels, biographies (including one of her great friend, the novelist and campaigner, Winifred Holtby), memoirs and a prolific number of magazine and newspaper articles.  Vera Brittain became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1946.

Her reputation in the popular imagination as an influential British feminist and pacifist is shaped predominantly by her haunting First World War memoir, Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900­–1925, published in 1933 to instant international acclaim.

Since her death in 1970 at the age of 76, Vera has become more famous. Never out print, Testament of Youth has become widely known through an award-winning 1979 BBC television dramatization starring Cheryl Campbell, repeated paperback editions, a ballet choregraphed by Kenneth Macmillan in 2008 and a film in 2014 starring Alice Vikander and Game of Thrones star Kit Harrington.  Testament of Youth has been translated into 7 languages and is on school and university reading lists.

The huge success of Testament of Youth in both book and television drama form in the late 1970s led to a spate of edited collections of Vera’s journalism, letters and diaries, and the reissue of three of her novels. From the 1980s onwards, academic and general interest in Vera’s writings, personality, and relationships has grown steadily.

There are numerous books and articles recognising her international contribution to twentieth-century feminism and pacifism through her prolific journalism and public speaking, her autobiographies and biographies, notably of her great friend, the feminist and socialist campaigner and writer, Winifred Holtby and, to a lesser extent through her five novels.

Copyright permission for photographs indicated by each image. The Vera Brittain Literary Archive; McMaster University, Ontario (McM); Somerville College (SC). The text of this website is by Kathryn Ecclestone (c)