A Passionate Prodigality: Fragments of Autobiography

By Guy Chapman

Book Overview

When A Passionate Prodigality was first published in 1933 it was hailed as one of the finest English works to have come out of the First World War. Today this memoir reads with a graphic immediacy, not merely in the descriptions of the filth and shock and carnage that characterized the struggle, but in its evocation of men at war - 'certain soldiers who have now become a small quantity of Christian dust'.

Stylish, honest and eloquent, A Passionate Prodigality is less a book than a living voice, demonstrating an important if little remembered truth: 'The poetry is not in the pity. To hell with your generalized pity. What the survivor remembers is not the fears he knew, the pains, but the faces and a few words of the men who were with him at the front.'

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1526750112
• ISBN13: 9781526750112
• Release Date: July 2019
• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Great Memoir of the Great War

This is a marvelous memoir by a soldier of the Royal Fusiliers from 1914 to 1920 who went on to become the Professor of Modern History at Leeds University. His prose speaks for itself: The attack was to be launched at streak of dawn, 4.25; and at that moment a wild racket was once more loosed into the void. Once more the curtain of darkness was changed to a whirling screen in which flaming clusters, red, orange and gold, dropped and died; and dun smoke, illuminated by explosions, drifted away greyish white. Once more red and green rockets called frantically for aid. Once more eyes stared into the impenetrable cataract, vainly trying to pick out familiar outlines. The enemy's barrage joined the din. Black columns of smoke stormed up in the foreground. And through it all came wave on wave of the malicious chitter of machine guns. Yes, this is a forgotten work. Yes, it is out of print. But go seek it out and become one of the few, the happy band of brother readers.