FORTHCOMING EVENTS IN 2026
Wednesday 11th March
Kathryn Ecclestone – Vera Brittain’s Early Life – A Different Story – Words by the Water Keswick
Monday 13th July, 6pm-7pm, Buxton International Festival
Rebecca Williams and Kathryn Ecclestone will be discussing how Vera’s early life helped shape her as a social reformer and what her daughter Shirley Williams called ‘a moral icon’. (Details and link to booking to follow).
PRESENTATIONS & EVENTS
2025
November 15th, 2pm Somerville College, Oxford
Between the Sandhills and the Sea
American composer Eric Starr performed his concert Between the Sandhills and the Sea. It sets poetry by Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby to music.
It was performed during October in New York, followed by two concerts in the UK at Oxford and St Andrews.
Between the Sandhills and the Sea – Youtube.com (Oxford)
A Note from Composer Eric Starr
Between the Sandhills and the Sea is a chamber work that celebrates the lives and legacies of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby. This performance is from 2025 at the JdP Music Building (St Hilda’s College, Oxford). It features Hannah Holman (cello), Katherine Miller (piano), and Tamzin Merchant (narrator) with sound design by Jeremy Gerard. This is a “mixed media” presentation of my original chamber music with historic poetry by Vera Brittain, Winifred Holtby, and W.E. Henley. The goal of the music is to complement the poetry thematically. Five of the poems by Vera Brittain were written during her early years as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse (WWI).
The project’s title borrows from Chapter 8 in Brittain’s autobiography Testament of Youth (1933). In this chapter, Brittain reflects on the “post-war frenzy for memorials—as though we could somehow compensate the dead.” But there was no restitution for a generation lost. She wrote of the “stone architecture” that covered the “soil that held so much agony,” lamenting, “Only the sandhills and the sea remained unchanged.” Additional poetry used in this project is by Winifred Holtby, Brittain’s dearest friend and fellow author/social campaigner. The program concludes with a stanza from W.E. Henley’s A Wink from Hesper. This poem, centered on eternal love, became a profound source of connection between Brittain and her fiancé, Roland Leighton, who was killed in the war.
During our presentation, you will hear several sound effects, including “seagull” harmonics played on the cello, bomb explosions created by striking the piano strings with the palm, and the scratchy sound of a record player. You will also hear a 21-bar excerpt from Edward Brittain’s song “L’Envoi.” Vera’s brother Edward was a budding violinist and composer, but died in WWI at age 22. I wanted to honour him too, so I included his song in “Movement V: Refuse to Forget.” Audiences often tell me that Edward’s piece sounds like a hymnal. His song is really a setting of a poem by Roland Leighton, the school friend who became Vera’s fiancé in 1915 and was killed in France in December that year. We do not include Leighton’s poem in our presentation.
For more about this project, including program titles and press quotes, please see: https://www.ericstarrmusic.com/featured-project
ARTICLES
2025
BBC Radio Derby – Secret Derbyshire, Vera Brittain: Did she actually hate Buxton?, February 2025
Buxton Advertiser Can Buxton find a home in its heart for Vera?, April 2025
Cumbria Life Vera Brittain’s little known connections to Cumbria, April 2025
Ecclestone, Kathryn Vera Brittain’s Early Life – Truth or Fiction?, Pen & Sword, March 2025
Ecclestone, Kathryn Remember Great Brittain – Why doesn’t Buxton honour Vera Brittain, author of Testament of Youth? ,The Oldie, Spring 2025
