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William: An Englishman
William was 'written in a rage in 1918; this extraordinary novel... is a passionate assertion of the futility of war' (the Spectator). Its author had been an actress and suffragette; after 1914 she worked at the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont and organised Concerts at the Front. William - an Englishman was written in a tent within sound of guns and shells; this 'stunning... terrifically good' novel (Radio 4's A Good Read) is in one sense a very personal book, animated by fury and cynicism, and in another a detached one; yet is always 'profoundly moving' (Financial Times).
In the view of Persephone Books, William is one of the greatest novels about war ever written: not the war of the fighting soldier or the woman waiting at home, but the war encountered by Mr and Mrs Everyman, wrenched away from their comfortable preoccupations - Socialism, Suffragettism, so gently mocked by Cicely Hamilton - and forced to be part of an almost dream-like horror (because they cannot at first believe what is happening to them). The scene when William and Griselda emerge after three idyllic weeks in a honeymoon cottage in the remote hills of the Belgian Ardennes, and encounter German brutality in a small village, is unforgettable. The book, which won the Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse in 1919, is a masterpiece, written with an immediacy and a grim realism reminiscent of an old-fashioned, flickering newsreel.
In the view of Persephone Books, William is one of the greatest novels about war ever written: not the war of the fighting soldier or the woman waiting at home, but the war encountered by Mr and Mrs Everyman, wrenched away from their comfortable preoccupations - Socialism, Suffragettism, so gently mocked by Cicely Hamilton - and forced to be part of an almost dream-like horror (because they cannot at first believe what is happening to them). The scene when William and Griselda emerge after three idyllic weeks in a honeymoon cottage in the remote hills of the Belgian Ardennes, and encounter German brutality in a small village, is unforgettable. The book, which won the Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse in 1919, is a masterpiece, written with an immediacy and a grim realism reminiscent of an old-fashioned, flickering newsreel.
226 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1919
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About the author
Cicely Mary Hamilton
30 books19 followersCicely Mary Hamilton (born Hammill), was an English author and co-founder of the Women Writers' Suffrage League.
She is best remembered for her plays which often included feminist themes. Hamilton's World War I novel "William - An Englishman" was reprinted by Persephone Books in 1999.
She was a friend of EM Delafield and was portrayed as Emma Hay in "A Provincial Lady Goes Further."
She is best remembered for her plays which often included feminist themes. Hamilton's World War I novel "William - An Englishman" was reprinted by Persephone Books in 1999.
She was a friend of EM Delafield and was portrayed as Emma Hay in "A Provincial Lady Goes Further."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
July 14, 2025
William Tully, a lukewarm insurance clerk with the soul of a footnote, inherits a modest income after the death of his domineering mother and mistakes it for a calling. Faraday, alias "Vindex" – a swaggering socialist – mistakes William for a disciple and initiates him into the rites of pamphleteering, public heckling, and righteous indignation.
Soon, William becomes a roving soapbox with ears, delivering secondhand fury at every street corner and falling in love with Griselda Watkins, a militant suffragette with an adenoidal lisp and the fervour of a Victorian Joan of Arc. Their marriage, a union of mirrored slogans, takes them to an isolated Belgian valley in July 1914 – just in time for Europe to lose its mind.
Cicely Hamilton strips down her couple’s slogans with cool, amused satirical precision and then lets history do the rest. As the war creeps toward them like a rising tide, the couple carry on arranging sandwiches and talking about the “Cause.” When reality breaks in – sudden, brutal, and entirely disinterested in their fortunes – their theories fall apart.
Griselda is swallowed by the violence; William, clinging to the wreckage of his beliefs, watches everything he didn’t understand annihilate everything he held dear. The second half of the novel trades its early comedy for quiet, merciless horror.
Hamilton's novel won the first Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse Anglais prize in 1920, which roughly translates to "Happy Life Prize for English Women," making it deliciously ironic that it chronicles the complete destruction of happiness and idealism. The book masquerades as anti-war literature while actually serving as a patriotic defense of the British war effort.
Hamilton's writing moves from dry wit to trench-dark despair without ever breaking stride. Her satire skewers blind idealism, the kind that marches into a firing squad with a badge and a slogan, believing it morally bulletproof.
No histrionics, no tearjerking, just the steady realization that certainty, like innocence, doesn’t survive impact. Hamilton has a talent for letting horror enters like a dropped spoon. No swelling violins, no epiphanies. The war just... arrives, a coffin full of silence, a field full of graves, and the remains of people who once believed they had all the answers.
Soon, William becomes a roving soapbox with ears, delivering secondhand fury at every street corner and falling in love with Griselda Watkins, a militant suffragette with an adenoidal lisp and the fervour of a Victorian Joan of Arc. Their marriage, a union of mirrored slogans, takes them to an isolated Belgian valley in July 1914 – just in time for Europe to lose its mind.
Cicely Hamilton strips down her couple’s slogans with cool, amused satirical precision and then lets history do the rest. As the war creeps toward them like a rising tide, the couple carry on arranging sandwiches and talking about the “Cause.” When reality breaks in – sudden, brutal, and entirely disinterested in their fortunes – their theories fall apart.
Griselda is swallowed by the violence; William, clinging to the wreckage of his beliefs, watches everything he didn’t understand annihilate everything he held dear. The second half of the novel trades its early comedy for quiet, merciless horror.
Hamilton's novel won the first Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse Anglais prize in 1920, which roughly translates to "Happy Life Prize for English Women," making it deliciously ironic that it chronicles the complete destruction of happiness and idealism. The book masquerades as anti-war literature while actually serving as a patriotic defense of the British war effort.
Hamilton's writing moves from dry wit to trench-dark despair without ever breaking stride. Her satire skewers blind idealism, the kind that marches into a firing squad with a badge and a slogan, believing it morally bulletproof.
No histrionics, no tearjerking, just the steady realization that certainty, like innocence, doesn’t survive impact. Hamilton has a talent for letting horror enters like a dropped spoon. No swelling violins, no epiphanies. The war just... arrives, a coffin full of silence, a field full of graves, and the remains of people who once believed they had all the answers.
June 4, 2019
Oh my this was great! William and Griselda are pompous social activists, parroting the opinions of others instead of forming their own, listening only to those who agree with them, and believing themselves heroic, even though they risk and sacrifice nothing. That is until they find themselves, quite by accident, on the Belgian front during WWI. Amazingly relevant even a hundred years after it was first published, it turns from hilarious to brutal on a dime.
February 5, 2025
We first meet William as a clerk, and very much under his Mothers thumb. When she dies, he starts to revel in his new found 'freedom' and becomes a socialist. He seems unable to have any ideas of his own, so this phase of his life is down to the suggestion of Faraday, one of his colleagues. He meets Griselda, a Suffragette who is described as his "Exact counterpart in petticoats". They soon get married and it's off to Belgium for a honeymoon. Here, they see no newspapers and don't speak the language, so when they start to get a bit bored and decide to head home, they are unaware that while they have been living in isolation, a war has broken out and they find themselves in the thick of it.
The first half was very different with the author poking fun at her main characters, but by the second half, the book has descended into the hell of war.
Well worth a read.
The first half was very different with the author poking fun at her main characters, but by the second half, the book has descended into the hell of war.
Well worth a read.
May 14, 2022
4.5 Stars.
As I read this book, I kept thinking “Poor William.” First he is stifled by his mother. Then with his new found freedom, he joins the Socialist movement- he spouts off nonsense that others spout off, not realizing the stupidity of some of what he says. Then “Poor William” finds himself in the middle of WWI, very unexpectedly.
His awakening from his total naïveté is heartbreaking.
“I don’t want you to think its courage , and I don’t want you to think I’m making any sacrifice- I’m not. I’m enlisting because I want to enlist- and there isn’t anything else for me to do. Everything’s gone now-I haven’t anything to go back to. No duties or....I don’t see how you can call it a sacrifice.”
A powerful book that is still so apropos today. Another of those books that will stay with me. And to think, this book was published in 1919.
Published: 1919
As I read this book, I kept thinking “Poor William.” First he is stifled by his mother. Then with his new found freedom, he joins the Socialist movement- he spouts off nonsense that others spout off, not realizing the stupidity of some of what he says. Then “Poor William” finds himself in the middle of WWI, very unexpectedly.
His awakening from his total naïveté is heartbreaking.
“I don’t want you to think its courage , and I don’t want you to think I’m making any sacrifice- I’m not. I’m enlisting because I want to enlist- and there isn’t anything else for me to do. Everything’s gone now-I haven’t anything to go back to. No duties or....I don’t see how you can call it a sacrifice.”
A powerful book that is still so apropos today. Another of those books that will stay with me. And to think, this book was published in 1919.
Published: 1919
February 7, 2017
This is such a poignant book about yet idealized beliefs and the dangers of insulating oneself from those that disagree with you. It's message is as relevant today in the wake of Trump's election and Brexit as it was to the socialists of the pre war era.
July 23, 2016
Hamilton's hero and heroine are ordinary English people, William and Griselda. They meet in the course of pursuing their various idealistic causes (pacifism, women's suffrage), get married, and go to a secluded cottage in the Ardennes for their honeymoon. While they're there, cut off from communication with the rest of the world, the war starts, and very soon they are swept into it, with tragic consequences.
Hamilton gently mocks their activism and idealism, how they speak of their "war" for Progress; yet when William and Griselda are caught up in the real war, she ceases to mock, and instead one feels her great sympathy for the victims of war and a great rage against the makers of it. This is a stunning, harrowing book and well deserves to have been the first book Persephone reprinted.
Hamilton gently mocks their activism and idealism, how they speak of their "war" for Progress; yet when William and Griselda are caught up in the real war, she ceases to mock, and instead one feels her great sympathy for the victims of war and a great rage against the makers of it. This is a stunning, harrowing book and well deserves to have been the first book Persephone reprinted.
February 15, 2016
I was not surprised to find out the author composed this novel in a tent on the front lines of World War I. The novel is a gruesome, starkly honest portrayal of the horrors of war. The author, however, draws the readers in at first with a light and satirical description of its gentle, naïve and optimistic main characters, William and Griselda.
When the story begins, William is twenty-six years old and still lives with his mother. He has an extremely ordered and monotonous life working at a clerk’s office and handing over most of his weekly paycheck to his mother. He doesn’t seem to have any genuine affection for his parent and when she suddenly dies he realizes that he never really loved her. Her death means freedom for him; not only does he now have financial freedom since she left him a sizeable inheritance but he also has the freedom to make his own decisions about the course his life will take.
William asks some advice from one of his fellow clerks about what he should do with his time and money and it is through this interaction with Farraday that William becomes involved with political and social reform. William leaves the tedious office where he has worked for many years and embarks on full-time career as a social activist who writes about, protests and goes to meetings about the suffragette movement, pacifism, and other socialist topics.
It is at these meetings that William meets Griselda, a feisty suffragette who shares the same ideals as William. The tone in the book that describes these two is one of gentle parody as William and Griselda appear to fight for mostly vague causes. They believe all government is evil and any attempt of a government to raise a military and train it is simply “playing” at warfare. They love to go to meetings and hand out pamphlets and consider themselves strong and tough for fighting against social injustices. They see themselves as the perfect couple and their courtship and devotion to each other is a sweet love story.
When William and Griselda take their honeymoon in the remote mountains of the Belgian Ardennes, they are uneasy with the slow-paced, quiet life of the village in which they are staying. But they settle in for a few weeks and enjoy each other’s company. It is on the very last day of their vacation that things take a horrible and tragic turn for the worst. They encounter a regiment of invading German soldiers who treat them brutally and inhumanely. I have to say that the violence in this book shocked me and Hamilton does not gloss over or sugarcoat the atrocities of war.
William, the once naïve and optimistic Englishman who lived in his happy little bubble of bliss, now becomes the disillusioned and distraught victim of real warfare. It is not a game or a joke when men are being blown apart and people’s lives are destroyed by gunfire and bombs. I don’t want to give away the plot and the fate of William and Griselda. But I will say that William’s story comes full circle and in the end his life becomes equally as monotonous and numb as it was when we first meet him living under the thumb of his mother. What starts out as an amusing story about two naïve lovebirds becomes a harsh commentary on the gory realities of warfare.
I encourage anyone who enjoys World War I historical fiction to pick up this book. Thanks to Persephone Press for reissuing another brilliant book from an important 20th century female author.
When the story begins, William is twenty-six years old and still lives with his mother. He has an extremely ordered and monotonous life working at a clerk’s office and handing over most of his weekly paycheck to his mother. He doesn’t seem to have any genuine affection for his parent and when she suddenly dies he realizes that he never really loved her. Her death means freedom for him; not only does he now have financial freedom since she left him a sizeable inheritance but he also has the freedom to make his own decisions about the course his life will take.
William asks some advice from one of his fellow clerks about what he should do with his time and money and it is through this interaction with Farraday that William becomes involved with political and social reform. William leaves the tedious office where he has worked for many years and embarks on full-time career as a social activist who writes about, protests and goes to meetings about the suffragette movement, pacifism, and other socialist topics.
It is at these meetings that William meets Griselda, a feisty suffragette who shares the same ideals as William. The tone in the book that describes these two is one of gentle parody as William and Griselda appear to fight for mostly vague causes. They believe all government is evil and any attempt of a government to raise a military and train it is simply “playing” at warfare. They love to go to meetings and hand out pamphlets and consider themselves strong and tough for fighting against social injustices. They see themselves as the perfect couple and their courtship and devotion to each other is a sweet love story.
When William and Griselda take their honeymoon in the remote mountains of the Belgian Ardennes, they are uneasy with the slow-paced, quiet life of the village in which they are staying. But they settle in for a few weeks and enjoy each other’s company. It is on the very last day of their vacation that things take a horrible and tragic turn for the worst. They encounter a regiment of invading German soldiers who treat them brutally and inhumanely. I have to say that the violence in this book shocked me and Hamilton does not gloss over or sugarcoat the atrocities of war.
William, the once naïve and optimistic Englishman who lived in his happy little bubble of bliss, now becomes the disillusioned and distraught victim of real warfare. It is not a game or a joke when men are being blown apart and people’s lives are destroyed by gunfire and bombs. I don’t want to give away the plot and the fate of William and Griselda. But I will say that William’s story comes full circle and in the end his life becomes equally as monotonous and numb as it was when we first meet him living under the thumb of his mother. What starts out as an amusing story about two naïve lovebirds becomes a harsh commentary on the gory realities of warfare.
I encourage anyone who enjoys World War I historical fiction to pick up this book. Thanks to Persephone Press for reissuing another brilliant book from an important 20th century female author.
August 16, 2021
I've decided to challenge myself to to read at least a dozen titles a year having to do with WWI, beginning next month. And so I laughed at myself when I realized this is what I was reading when I made that decision. OK, start the challenge a month early!
This was a very good beginning for such a challenge. It is a reference for the social climate in England before the war. William has become an agitator for socialism when he meets Griselda, a suffragette and frequent protester. They are almost blissfully unaware of any other issues, and laugh at the idea there could ever be a war. They also have no idea what "war" means and think it more like police skirmishes on street corners against protestors. They marry and happily go to rural Belgium for the honeymoon, cut off from the world.
Hamilton did a marvelous job of letting us feel the chaos of the early days of the war and how it affected civilians. This is a side to the war I have not before encountered. My object is to experience The Great War in as many aspects as I can, so this was a particularly valuable read for me. The characterizations of William and Griselda were well done. I might discount the writing a bit, but not much. This is a solid 4-stars.
This was a very good beginning for such a challenge. It is a reference for the social climate in England before the war. William has become an agitator for socialism when he meets Griselda, a suffragette and frequent protester. They are almost blissfully unaware of any other issues, and laugh at the idea there could ever be a war. They also have no idea what "war" means and think it more like police skirmishes on street corners against protestors. They marry and happily go to rural Belgium for the honeymoon, cut off from the world.
Hamilton did a marvelous job of letting us feel the chaos of the early days of the war and how it affected civilians. This is a side to the war I have not before encountered. My object is to experience The Great War in as many aspects as I can, so this was a particularly valuable read for me. The characterizations of William and Griselda were well done. I might discount the writing a bit, but not much. This is a solid 4-stars.
February 5, 2021
This was an astonishing and heartbreaking novel. It starts as a dryly satirical depiction of a young courting couple who are deeply involved in local politics but really don't have a clue about what is happening in the rest of the world. Their arrogance and provincialism are such that they marry and decide to honeymoon in Belgium in July 1914. When war breaks out, which it does, they are instantly plunged into the terror and the chaos that comes with an invading army and a retreating population. The tone shifts from satire to a gentle empathy as Gwendolyn and William not only have their intellectual world shattered but their physical surroundings as well. Thought provoking, poignant and strangely relevant to today.
January 21, 2021
"I decided that here was material for a story; a young man and woman, enthusiastic, ignorant, who had thought of their little political scuffles as war and who stumbled accidentally into the other kind of war - of bullets and blood and high explosives." Cicely Hamilton, as quoted by Nicola Beauman in the Preface to William: An Englishman.
This book starts off on a decidedly satirical note. The author is definitely mocking her two main characters, William and Griselda, and their political pretensions. Each is devoted to a cause: Griselda to 'Woman' (Women's Suffrage) and William to a sort of non-militarism described by the author as a devotion to 'the Ballot', 'the Voice of the People' and 'Democracy'. William and Griselda's days are taken up with meetings, ballots and protests, and they live in a tidy and smug world unchallenged by any ideas other than those they already fervently believe in.
They believed (quite rightly) in the purity of their own intentions; and concluded (quite wrongly) that the intentions of all persons who did not agree with them must therefore be evil and impure . . . They were, in short, very honest and devout sectarians - cocksure, contemptuous, intolerant, self-sacrificing after the manner of their kind.
Quite early in the book, William and Griselda - so perfectly matched in their looks, precise position in English society, and political outlook - are married. For their honeymoon, they travel to a rural part of Belgium - described as a beautiful 'Arden' - to stay in the home of a friend who shares their revolutionary zeal. After several weeks of this idyll, which borders on boredom for them, they are thrust into a situation which turns quickly from absurdity to tragedy. While they have been honeymooning, World War I has broken out around them - and having been completely dismissive of even the possibility of war, it takes some brute reality to penetrate their thick skin of denial.
There is something very skilful and clever about the way that Hamilton lulls the reader, just as her main characters have been lulled. I couldn't help but find contemporary parallels throughout the book - not just in terms of the rigidness and intolerance of the characters' mindset, but also the flimsiness of that mindset when confronted with an alternate reality.
It's a funny sort of war book - prosaic in the extreme, but not without its own realism and tragedy. It's quite a sad little book, and my middling sort of rating probably reflects my lack of pleasure in reading it more than the actual value of the book's subject or its writing style. In the end, it's about a the most ordinary of Englishman whose life and 'service' doesn't add up to much. Even the tragedy in it is pretty minor key, and that is the point. Although William is roused to do 'his duty' for his country, there is a crushing honesty in his realisation that his duty hasn't been of much use, to himself or anyone else.
3.5 stars
February 5, 2012
The story of William Tully, a naive and idealistic young English clerk who is honeymooning in rural Belgium with his equally naive young bride when they are caught in the backwash of the beginning of the First World War. It is heartbreaking in places and William's development and disillusionment is brilliantly drawn, as is the helplessness that ordinary people feel when they accidentally fall into events that are completely beyond their understanding.
Cicely Hamilton wrote this book in wartime France while working in an army hospital and entertaining frontline troops with concerts. I thought this was a wonderful book about the futility of war that deserves to be much better known.
Cicely Hamilton wrote this book in wartime France while working in an army hospital and entertaining frontline troops with concerts. I thought this was a wonderful book about the futility of war that deserves to be much better known.
April 27, 2019
As timeless as it is rooted in the specific events of one particular age, William is a jolting tale of humanity in search of its purpose, in search of a reason for its observably-flawed and seemingly mundane and circular existence. I was moved with empathy for its central character, his sincerity of direction, however imperfect and misguided at times of youth and ignorance, and ultimately, the arc of his ongoing, unavoidable, and often manipulated reflection of an insular life in a time of entrenched warfare. This is a must read, a quiet classic of 1919.
“I’m not like the men in the trenches who may be killed any minute... but all the same I... I just wait to see what happens.”
“I’m not like the men in the trenches who may be killed any minute... but all the same I... I just wait to see what happens.”
did-not-finish
June 30, 2017Hated the monstrously bloated, abstract, Latinate prose. Abandoned on page 12. Blech!
December 8, 2012
This novel originally published in 1920 was Cicely Hamilton’s blistering answer to the realities of war as experienced by Mr and Mrs Everyman. Cicely Hamilton was serving in France at the time that she wrote this novel, and we see the war ravaged landscape through her eyes. Lulling the reader into a false sense of security, the novel starts off benignly enough; William Tully is an unremarkable young man in an insurance office, small, weak, pale and rather dominated by his mother. When his mother dies – William delights in his freedom, and uses it to launch himself upon the world of political agitators, aided and abetted by his new friend Faraday. He meets Griselda a young suffragette ‘his exact counterpart in petticoats’ who has already spent time in prison and is a zealous agitator herself, these two ideally suited young people, inevitably marry. So concerned are they with their own political ideals and activist confederates that they have very little idea of the gathering storm clouds over Europe in the summer of 1914. They honeymoon in Ardennes in Belgium where they bury themselves in a cottage for three weeks, neither of them able to converse with the locals, and having no contact with anyone back in England they are in total ignorance that war has broken out. On the day they start to think about returning to England and the hustle, bustle and political landscape they have both so missed, they find the farm nearby inexplicably deserted. The following day outside the gates of this same farm, the young couple come across a group of German soldiers. Instantly they are faced with the brutalities ad horrors of wartime as they are taken hostage.
“There, in the middle of the road, they also halted—the soldiers smartly, the captives uncertainly—and William saw the two civilians clearly. One was a short and rotund little man who might have been sixty to sixty-five and might have been a local tradesman—nearly bald and with drooping moustaches, rather like a stout little seal. Essentially an ordinary and unpretentious creature, he was obviously aiming at dignity; his chin was lifted at an angle that revealed the measure of the roll of fat that rested on his collar, and he walked almost with a strut, as if he were attempting to march. Afterwards William remembered that he had seen on the little man’s portly stomach some sort of insignia or ribbon; at the time it conveyed nothing to him, he was told later that it was the outward token of a mayor. He remembered also that the little man’s face was pale, with a sickly yellow-grey pallor; and that as he came down the steps with his head held up the drooping moustache quivered and the fat chin beneath it twitched spasmodically. There was something extraordinarily pitiful about his attempt at a personal dignity which nature had wholly denied him; William felt the appeal in it even before he grasped the situation the meaning and need of pose.”
Over the next few days the horrors which face both William and the reader are desperate, the images which Hamilton leaves the reader with are reminiscent of Pat Barker and even the war poets themselves. However it is William’s later response to his experiences in Belgium which are at the heart of this novel, his disappointment in the small contribution he must inevitably play is heart-breaking. Cicely Hamilton’s powerful and enormously readable novel is an important and brilliant piece of writing not just about War, but about socialism, suffrage and the naivety of youth, and the response of the many to the threat imposed on one nation by another. How different are today’s celebrity obsessed young people with their sense of entitlement!
May 6, 2014
I wanted to read this book this year as part of the 100th anniversary of WWI. I expected it to be a Persephone-like take on the war--perhaps something about the home front or about how it affected families/households. I couldn't have been more wrong. This novel is gritty, violent, and doesn't hold any punches. The first third of the book or so is so fiercely satirical that I almost couldn't take how mean the author was to the two main characters. Once war breaks out, she doesn't relent, and just throws more and more at them.
This novel was written while Hamilton was literally at the front acting as a nurse, and her incredibly bleak outlook infuses this book. It was something that I actively disliked reading, but that made me pretty thoughtful.
Adding a link to the reviews of this on Goodreads, as they've made me even more thoughtful about this book. (I initially added this to my list as part of the WWI theme read over there.)
https://www.librarything.com/work/760...
This novel was written while Hamilton was literally at the front acting as a nurse, and her incredibly bleak outlook infuses this book. It was something that I actively disliked reading, but that made me pretty thoughtful.
Adding a link to the reviews of this on Goodreads, as they've made me even more thoughtful about this book. (I initially added this to my list as part of the WWI theme read over there.)
https://www.librarything.com/work/760...
March 3, 2020
This book deserves a larger audience than it has had. It's one of the most insistently unsentimental books about war that I have read in a long time. And it took several swerves that were wholly unexpected to me. Just when I thought I knew what kind of book this was, it became a different kind of book altogether. But somehow it all holds together in a really interesting, moving, surprising way.
February 7, 2025
A surprising novel. An interesting point of view, a memorable character, and the clash of an idealistic couple with the horror of the war... The emotion of the author was on the pages.
Yes, with further editing, the book would have appeared more polished and professional, but I think it would have lost the fires.
Yes, with further editing, the book would have appeared more polished and professional, but I think it would have lost the fires.
tbr-soon
February 27, 2019Recommended by Tania.
November 8, 2016
I would rate the first quarter of this book as two stars, and the rest as five stars. That evens out at...I don't exactly know, but let's call it four stars.
Why did I persist after not being impressed with the opening chapters? Well, this is a Persephone title, and after enjoying so many books from their list, I had faith that the book would improve, and it did. However, it leaves me with one burning question, and that is: Cicely, what is your damage?
The early chapters introduce our two protagonists: William, a clerk who inherits a private income when his mother dies and throws up his job in favour of becoming a social reformer; and his soon-to-be wife Griselda, a suffragette. They marry: Griselda does not promise to obey and ties suffragette ribbons to her bouquet. This is to be an equal partnership between spouses who share the same ideals. And then they honeymoon in Belgium. In August 1914. Aren't they worried about the First World War which is about to start? Not really, because they are pacifists and internationalists, and don't believe that war could ever really happen. This proves to be wishful thinking, and tragedy ensues.
Cicely Hamilton doesn't think much of either William or Griselda, and has no qualms about letting us know it:
William and Griselda are followers, not leaders, and they're certainly not great thinkers. But a movement needs followers as well as leaders. Thanks to women like Griselda who gave their time and their energy, and men like William who were willing in addition to give up their privilege, I have the vote. So Cicely Hamilton's satiric tone doesn't sit well with me. William and Griselda are terribly naïve, but their hearts are in the right place. Ultimately their story is of two people who were desperate to make a positive difference to the world and were thwarted at every turn. I can't find it in me to laugh at them.
The author's contempt for her characters also weakens her writing-they don't come to life as they should because she seems so annoyed with them. (This is incidentally a problem I had with another work of wartime satire, Marghanita Laski's To Bed With Grand Music). Fortunately this changes after the ill-fated honeymoon. What follows is some of the most powerful writing about war I have read. Cicely Hamilton doesn't sugar-coat anything - the shooting of hostages, the brutal treatment of prisoners, the desperate flight of refugees, the hasty burials, the terror of an air raid and the pointless, labyrinthine bureaucracy. Here is William on the run from the German army:
Caught up in events beyond their understanding, William and Griselda grow in depth and humanity as the pages turn. The book becomes very hard to put down, and in fact I finished it in a day.
But back to my question: Cicely, what is your damage? What are you trying to say in this book? I get that you don't like the fluffy type of suffragette, like Griselda, who smashes shop windows in picture hats. But the picture hat seems like a feminist statement to me: why should Griselda feel that because her behaviour doesn't conform to gender stereotypes, her clothes shouldn't either? I'm fine with her wearing the picture hat, not so much with the victimising of innocent retailers. I get that you despise William because he starts out as an internationalist who inveighs against militarism, until close acquaintance with the Kaiser's army changes his mind. Perhaps I'd understand the book better if I was reading it in 1919, when it was published, rather than 2016. Because, from where I'm currently standing, internationalism led to the formation of the UN, the WHO and the EU (which won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2012). Militarism is why farmers in Belgium have to reinforce their tractors to give them a chance of survival when they drive over one of the 300 million unexploded shells, mortars and grenades still littered over World War One battlefields. I can't help feeling that William was right the first time.
Why did I persist after not being impressed with the opening chapters? Well, this is a Persephone title, and after enjoying so many books from their list, I had faith that the book would improve, and it did. However, it leaves me with one burning question, and that is: Cicely, what is your damage?
The early chapters introduce our two protagonists: William, a clerk who inherits a private income when his mother dies and throws up his job in favour of becoming a social reformer; and his soon-to-be wife Griselda, a suffragette. They marry: Griselda does not promise to obey and ties suffragette ribbons to her bouquet. This is to be an equal partnership between spouses who share the same ideals. And then they honeymoon in Belgium. In August 1914. Aren't they worried about the First World War which is about to start? Not really, because they are pacifists and internationalists, and don't believe that war could ever really happen. This proves to be wishful thinking, and tragedy ensues.
Cicely Hamilton doesn't think much of either William or Griselda, and has no qualms about letting us know it:
Their creed, like their code of manners and morals, was identical or practically identical. It was a simple creed and they held to it loyally and faithfully. They believed in a large, vague and beautifully undefined identity, called by William the People, and by Griselda, Woman; who in the time to come was to accomplish much beautiful and undefined Good; and in whose service they were prepared meanwhile to suffer any amount of obloquy and talk any amount of nonsense. They believed that Society could be straightened and set right by the well-meaning efforts of well-meaning souls like themselves-aided by the Ballot, the Voice of the People, and Woman. They believed, in defiance of the teachings of history, that Democracy is another word for peace and goodwill towards men. They believed (quite rightly) in the purity of their own intentions; and concluded (quite wrongly) that the intentions of all persons who did not agree with them must therefore be evil and impure....They were, in short, very honest and devout sectarians-cocksure, contemptuous, intolerant, self-sacrificing after the manner of their kind.
William and Griselda are followers, not leaders, and they're certainly not great thinkers. But a movement needs followers as well as leaders. Thanks to women like Griselda who gave their time and their energy, and men like William who were willing in addition to give up their privilege, I have the vote. So Cicely Hamilton's satiric tone doesn't sit well with me. William and Griselda are terribly naïve, but their hearts are in the right place. Ultimately their story is of two people who were desperate to make a positive difference to the world and were thwarted at every turn. I can't find it in me to laugh at them.
The author's contempt for her characters also weakens her writing-they don't come to life as they should because she seems so annoyed with them. (This is incidentally a problem I had with another work of wartime satire, Marghanita Laski's To Bed With Grand Music). Fortunately this changes after the ill-fated honeymoon. What follows is some of the most powerful writing about war I have read. Cicely Hamilton doesn't sugar-coat anything - the shooting of hostages, the brutal treatment of prisoners, the desperate flight of refugees, the hasty burials, the terror of an air raid and the pointless, labyrinthine bureaucracy. Here is William on the run from the German army:
There were moments when it seemed to him that he was asleep and would surely waken; when he put out his hand to touch something and feel that it resisted and was real-a dusty axle, a gate, a wall, the dusty bark of a fruit-tree. And there were other moments when the now was real, and he seemed to have newly wakened from the dream of a world impossible-of streets and stations and meals that came regularly, of life that was decent and reasonable and orderly, with men like unto himself....Late in the afternoon he started and lifted his head in sudden trembling recognition of a sound reminiscent, and because reminiscent beloved-the near-by whistle of a passing engine, the near-by clank of a train. The note of the whistle, the sight of a long line of trucks-but a field's breadth away behind a fence-brought a rush of hope to his heart and a rush of tears to his eyes. His soul thrilled with the promise of them; after the vagabond horror of the last few days they stood for decency, for civilization, for a means of escape from hell. His eyes followed the train with longing as it snorted over a level meadow and wound out of sight behind a hill-followed it with longing, with something that was almost love.
Caught up in events beyond their understanding, William and Griselda grow in depth and humanity as the pages turn. The book becomes very hard to put down, and in fact I finished it in a day.
But back to my question: Cicely, what is your damage? What are you trying to say in this book? I get that you don't like the fluffy type of suffragette, like Griselda, who smashes shop windows in picture hats. But the picture hat seems like a feminist statement to me: why should Griselda feel that because her behaviour doesn't conform to gender stereotypes, her clothes shouldn't either? I'm fine with her wearing the picture hat, not so much with the victimising of innocent retailers. I get that you despise William because he starts out as an internationalist who inveighs against militarism, until close acquaintance with the Kaiser's army changes his mind. Perhaps I'd understand the book better if I was reading it in 1919, when it was published, rather than 2016. Because, from where I'm currently standing, internationalism led to the formation of the UN, the WHO and the EU (which won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2012). Militarism is why farmers in Belgium have to reinforce their tractors to give them a chance of survival when they drive over one of the 300 million unexploded shells, mortars and grenades still littered over World War One battlefields. I can't help feeling that William was right the first time.
March 27, 2022
This is about a convinced pacifist, William, and his wife, Griselda, a young British couple with little experience of real life. William has a small income and needn't work, and the pair spend the bulk of their time attending political meetings or agitating and protesting.
Their idealistic beliefs are shattered while honeymooning in Belgium, where WWI lands at their feet.
The premise is good and the there are some strong sections, such as being taken prisoner by the Germans, and William's experience late in the book. For the most part it is a book of ideas and social criticism, and there are some arid bits.
Their idealistic beliefs are shattered while honeymooning in Belgium, where WWI lands at their feet.
The premise is good and the there are some strong sections, such as being taken prisoner by the Germans, and William's experience late in the book. For the most part it is a book of ideas and social criticism, and there are some arid bits.
Read
January 17, 2020"When Griselda tripped over a tussock and sprawled her length on the grass ... the jeers hurt more than the shaking and she staggered to her feet with tears of dignity running openly down her nose -- seeking in vain for that sense of moral superiority and satisfaction in martyrdom which had always sustained her en route to the cells of Bow Street ... Neither she nor William could speak -- they had no breath left in them to speak; but every now and then as they shambled along they turned their hot faces to look at each other -- and saw, each, a beloved countenance red with exertion and damp with perspiration, a pair of bewildered blue eyes and a gasping open mouth ... So they trotted down the valley, humiliated, dishevelled, indignant, but still incredulous -- while their world crumbled about them and Europe thundered and bled."
~~front flap
This was a very difficult book to read. For content I wanted to give it one star because it was so grimly realistic (I tend to be a pacifist because I always know that for each soldier or civilian fallen, there's a family thrust into heart-wrenching mourning) but the writing is so good I stuck with three.
This is the story of William Tully and Griselda Watkins, who are militarily against war and militarily for the suffragette movement.
It's a sad, gruesome, realistic story, and ends not with a bang but a whimper. But it's outstanding for its bravery, being published in 1919, when the world was still reeling from the devastation of the first "modern" war. Well worth reading: whether you're a pacifist or a hawk, this book will worm its way into your brain and cause you to think and rethink your convictions.
~~front flap
This was a very difficult book to read. For content I wanted to give it one star because it was so grimly realistic (I tend to be a pacifist because I always know that for each soldier or civilian fallen, there's a family thrust into heart-wrenching mourning) but the writing is so good I stuck with three.
This is the story of William Tully and Griselda Watkins, who are militarily against war and militarily for the suffragette movement.
"His being 'pitchforked into the real thing' is the central theme of the book. The young couple, completely caught up in a different struggle, give their lives to Progress ('It was a very solemn little moment; affianced lovers, they dedicated themselves to their mission, the uplifting of the human race') and, leaving behind 'their purely urban environment of crowds, committees and grievances', set off on their honeymoon to the Ardennes."Just as World War I breaks out, and they find themselves behind enemy lines, and subsequently captured by German soldiers. The book details the events of that capture, contrasting the reality with the idealism that had heretofore been the dominant theme of their lives.
It's a sad, gruesome, realistic story, and ends not with a bang but a whimper. But it's outstanding for its bravery, being published in 1919, when the world was still reeling from the devastation of the first "modern" war. Well worth reading: whether you're a pacifist or a hawk, this book will worm its way into your brain and cause you to think and rethink your convictions.
March 16, 2021
This is a book to read for its social commentary more than its literary merit (although there is nothing wrong with that either). It’s going to take a while to digest but at its heart it speaks of the dangers of the ‘echo chamber’ and blinkered activism - throughout the book Hamilton emphasises the importance of the ‘grey’ in debates and how we need to take time to understand the whole picture rather than just the bits that fit with our world view.
It’s also a book full of contradictions. For example, it is referred to as an anti war novel, but Hamilton is also brutally dismissive of pacifists and her take seems to be more - war is bad but sometimes the ramifications of not having a war are worse. At the same time there are so many small scenes and one liners that hit home about its brutality in a different way to the literature and films that we are more used to (because she was a woman working at the front and seeing things differently?). There is little glory and honour - be that the decorated war hero who is the least brave during an air raid (after all he has experienced the consequences of one previously) or the man trying to look as if he is facing death with dignity but who still looks terrified all the same.
The more I think about it, the more I am seeing about the importance of Hamilton’s book (I haven’t even mentioned her comments on the futility of bureaucracy and a life working in administration...). Suffice to say, it’s astonishingly relevant. You may not agree with everything that she says (her satirising is pretty relentless at points) but it’s amazing to see so many of the issues that she describes manifested in our current world a hundred years later. This is a book that (in my experience at least) adds something very different to literature about war and is well worth reading for that alone.
It’s also a book full of contradictions. For example, it is referred to as an anti war novel, but Hamilton is also brutally dismissive of pacifists and her take seems to be more - war is bad but sometimes the ramifications of not having a war are worse. At the same time there are so many small scenes and one liners that hit home about its brutality in a different way to the literature and films that we are more used to (because she was a woman working at the front and seeing things differently?). There is little glory and honour - be that the decorated war hero who is the least brave during an air raid (after all he has experienced the consequences of one previously) or the man trying to look as if he is facing death with dignity but who still looks terrified all the same.
The more I think about it, the more I am seeing about the importance of Hamilton’s book (I haven’t even mentioned her comments on the futility of bureaucracy and a life working in administration...). Suffice to say, it’s astonishingly relevant. You may not agree with everything that she says (her satirising is pretty relentless at points) but it’s amazing to see so many of the issues that she describes manifested in our current world a hundred years later. This is a book that (in my experience at least) adds something very different to literature about war and is well worth reading for that alone.
August 1, 2020
Yet another excellent choice on the part of Nicola Beauman. This book starts as a rather vicious satire of silly people who enjoy nothing more than using worthwhile causes to justify deriding anyone who doesn't agree with them totally and completely. Such are William and Griselda who get married largely because each validates the other's self-image as a fearless social activist. Of course they are nothing but, and find that war is a very different thing when you are caught up in it than when you pontificate about it from the safety of a room where everybody is of the same persuasion as yourself. William and Griselda meet this brutal reality when Germany invades Belgium during their honeymoon in the Ardennes. In short order they are taken prisoners, manage somehow to flee during an attack, and get wounded in the process. When Griselda dies, William, who has lost all his beliefs and illusions in the space of a few days, is totally benumbed and only copes with the funeral arrangements because he is taken in hand by a kind Englishwoman who is as stranded as he is but more resourceful. She gets him back to Britain where William tries, at first unsuccessfully, to enlist. Finally he joins the army and does his best to become a real fighter in order to avenge his beloved, but he simply doesn't have it in him and is relegated to a desk job. He dies towards the end of the war without having been able to forget Griselda or make senses of what happened to them. Brilliant and very moving.
Read
January 12, 2015Firstly, the forward author, Nicola Beauman, is spot-on:
This I found the be the most interesting aspect of William - An Englishman - not only how quickly William's and Griselda's attitudes change toward pacifism as they are unknowingly thrown on the front lines of WWI but my own reaction to William and Griselda's foolishness and ignorance while honeymooning.
This initial, vindictive reaction was short lived, however, as William and Griselda begin to understand the mechanisms of warfare firsthand - witnessing horrific acts of violence. And by the end of the novel one realizes that war, no matter whose side one is defending, changes an individual's life/perspective/behavior and more broadly - of the collective conscience - forever.
**I have intentionally chosen not to judge this novel using the star-rating system; however, suffice it to say: please read this book.
The lightness of tone [at the beginning of the novel] - the satire on the squabbles and smallnesses of the suffragette movement - lulls the reading into a false sense of security; only much later do we realise that is some ways we have been deliberately placed in the same situation as the hero and heroine.
This I found the be the most interesting aspect of William - An Englishman - not only how quickly William's and Griselda's attitudes change toward pacifism as they are unknowingly thrown on the front lines of WWI but my own reaction to William and Griselda's foolishness and ignorance while honeymooning.
This initial, vindictive reaction was short lived, however, as William and Griselda begin to understand the mechanisms of warfare firsthand - witnessing horrific acts of violence. And by the end of the novel one realizes that war, no matter whose side one is defending, changes an individual's life/perspective/behavior and more broadly - of the collective conscience - forever.
**I have intentionally chosen not to judge this novel using the star-rating system; however, suffice it to say: please read this book.
March 16, 2021
William and Griselda are a young couple who strive to campaign for their beliefs to do with socialism, women suffragette, and Progress for the Cause. When they get married they go to a remote area in Belgian and while there war breaks out. They have no idea until they leave and find the German soldiers at the lodgings of their hosts. Where they are captured, tortured, made to work and finally escape.
This is a very powerful book on the difference in the stages of their lives, to be believing and campaigning for progress one several causes to accepting they were wrong and nothing really mattered like it did war had broken out. A very emotional and sad storyline, but one that is important. It relays the fears of the soldiers, the idealistic views of the individuals involved, and the loss and love felt throughout the war.
This is a very powerful book on the difference in the stages of their lives, to be believing and campaigning for progress one several causes to accepting they were wrong and nothing really mattered like it did war had broken out. A very emotional and sad storyline, but one that is important. It relays the fears of the soldiers, the idealistic views of the individuals involved, and the loss and love felt throughout the war.
July 24, 2017
Thanks to Persephone Books for keeping this book in print. Unusual, powerful story of a young English couple caught in the early days of WWI while they are on their three week honeymoon in rural Belgium.
Before their marriage, they become involved in activism and the progressive politics of their times: pacifism, socialism, and votes for women. Going to political rallies and protests together, getting arrested together, sharing a sense of outrage and social justice... They have no idea how everything will change when suddenly they are thrust into war on the ground.
I could easily imagine a modern version of this story.
Before their marriage, they become involved in activism and the progressive politics of their times: pacifism, socialism, and votes for women. Going to political rallies and protests together, getting arrested together, sharing a sense of outrage and social justice... They have no idea how everything will change when suddenly they are thrust into war on the ground.
I could easily imagine a modern version of this story.
July 13, 2010
This is the story of a socialist and a suffragette on their honeymoon who are accidentally caught up in the outbreak of World War I. It is a very pointed commentary on the ridiculousness of black and white ideology in the face of the harsh reality of war and really should be required reading for anyone who's never had that experience firsthand. I'm glad I read it but I doubt I'd read it again as it's a bit too dismal to be a favorite.
September 9, 2023
There's a reason that works such as All Quiet on the Western Front and the poetry of Wilfred Owen are remembered and this ain't. Maybe if Cicely Hamilton hadn't spent an undue amount of energy high-mindedly sneering at her protagonists for their youthfully naïve convictions, the whole thing would have come off more successfully instead of reading like a revenge fantasy targeting people whose politics and activism tactics she disagrees with.
March 19, 2012
I was surprised by how moved I was by "William, An Englishman". The book speaks to the naivety of youth and blind conviction, extremes during the hells and trials of WWI, and how life experiences can change your world view forever.
February 16, 2019
This book was a novel look at the First World War. Written by an author who was actually working in France during the time, it reads as especially real. It is poignant without being overly depressive.
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