Julian Grenfell by Nicholas Mosley

Julian Grenfell Reviews

• 
  Lauren

  What an extraordinary book.
  
  At first, I could not quite figure out why Persephone had reissued this or why I was even reading it. I've always been interested in Mosley even though or perhaps because of his family being so politically abhorrent but I couldn't quite imagine why I'd read a biography about someone I hadn't the foggiest about.
  It is a biography of Grenfell whose life was cut short by WWI and had a few good poems to his credit but it's much more about the class that Grenfell came from and why the war was almost n inevitability. Mosely has a family connection to Grenfell by marriage and you can really feel him trying to figure out who these people are, what motivated them and even more, what broke them. Mosley's own family history is never far away, I imagine, although it's not mentioned here.
  
  It's a bit of name-droppy muddle at the beginning but gains strength as the war gets closer and Grenfell becomes an adult, stymied at every turn by his family, his class and his mother whose ideas about how to live, filial devotion, and sacrifice dominated his own. Toxic masculinity damages everyone.
  
  I have a few quibbles about it - can you really blame the mother for everything when the father was so often out of the picture and my own class consciousness bristled a little at these lives of leisure and privilege bemoaning their state but it's a really interesting study and as telling about the biographer as it is about his chosen subject.
• 
  Jeslyn

  While the individual strands of Mosley's biography were rather tedious in the early - and middle - going, he ramped up very well in second half, and the beginning tangents were definitely justified. It' no small undertaking to build a biography of a young person to begin with (Grenfell lived only to age 27, and was not a prolific writer), but the author's aim is more difficult because his primary source material consists of letters between Grenfell's mother Ettie and her friends ("The Souls", a well-known group of social/political intellectuals of the late 19th/early 20th century), and much of the referenced correspondence occurs while Julian is a small child. Ettie Grenfell casts a long and significant shadow over her son's life, as an individual and a representative of the mindset of the times - at times it seems the book is more about Ettie than Julian, but that is in perfect keeping with this curious woman, who seemed to be competing with her son to live his life better than him. There are heartbreaking moments in the book, and one of the most poignant moments of this mother-son wrestling for me was Ettie's editing/"improving" of Julian's poem, Into Battle, shortly after his death, before submitting it for publication. In fact, Ettie's version is the one that gained Julian posthumous fame, and Mosley took criticism for not using the well-known version, and instead publishing the original version - he was absolutely right to do so, and in describing the circumstances of the original document, it is incomprehensible to me that Ettie would have changed a single word - the original is beautiful.
  
  There is so much romanticizing of pre-WWI England, even today, but the flowery, dreamlike musings about honor, duty, goodness, beauty, etc. were in many ways very damaging to those brought up in those surroundings, and ill-equipped many for the changes that would wipe out their "halcyon days" forever.
  
  
• 
  Whimsical

  After having read the biography of Ettie Desborough, I was not expecting so much of this book to be about her. However, I guess one much understand the mother to then understand the son, Julian Grenfell. Having said that, I quite enjoyed reading this book except the chapter on Julian' s book on philosophy.
  
  Julian Grenfell in my opinion was a tragic figure who was beset by depression and seem to have been beset with other mental health issues during his short life. He also loved writing and had a knack for art both of which he wanted to pursue but did not or could not because it was not the type of life his mother especially wanted for her aristocratic son and heir.
  
  He joined the army was was bored, but then that was what both parents deemed he should do. Bored with his life he jumped at the opportunity to join the first World War and rather enjoyed killing only to be killed himself in the end.
  
• 
  Linda

  Rather than review this myself I am linking to a review by Dove Grey Reader, a UK blog that I used to follow. The writer did what I did, let the book sit on the shelf for years before picking it up. This was one of the first books I ordered from Persephone Press. Despite being a biography of a WWI poet/soldier the war is the smallest section in the book. It is much more a look at life before the war and suggests not much was the way we imagine or is portrayed in movies.
  
  
  http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dov...
• 
  Jesuitstea

  I have yet to find a publication by Persephone Books that didn't impress me with the quality of their delightful paperbacks, and this fine little number looks as crisp as ever after a year of interment reading and less than delicate travel.
  
  For the contents itself, Mosley has a bad habit of repeating and backtracking, often word for word, the salient points of his biography. The description of the "battle" of the sexes in turn of the Century Britain, and Julian's chafing under his loved-and-despised mother Ettie was for me the highlight of the book.
• 
  Rachel of Winterley

  I found this thoroughly absorbing, and at times quite shocking in its portrayal of particular social attitudes to family and to war and to what was expected of young men, prior to WWI. The mother of Julian is in some ways an absolute monster, but you can't help but recognise the trauma of her own childhood and past and the fact that these things have repercussions down the generations. A wonderful insight into a world view that seems in many ways totally alien to us now - but maybe not to everyone, everywhere. And eye-opener, certainly.
• 
  Rosemary

  This was not what I expected but I really enjoyed it. Julian Grenfell, born in 1888, was an aristocratic army officer and poet killed in the First World War. Unlike many war poets his best known poem 'Into Battle' celebrates war rather than dealing with the horrors. He was killed in the spring of 1915 so perhaps he didn't have time to become disillusioned - but he was a man who enjoyed hunting and shooting more than almost anything else, so perhaps it was just his nature.
  
  Nicholas Mosley was married to a granddaughter of Julian Grenfell's mother Ettie (Julian would have been his uncle-in-law if he had lived) and the book was written with full access to the family papers that Ettie kept. Because of this (and perhaps also because Mosley had known Ettie) there is a huge amount about her in the book. She was a beautiful and popular socialite who numbered many Edwardian politicians among her admirers - until she moved on to young men of her son's age.
  
  Altogether it is a fascinating look at the 25 years from 1890 to 1915 and the build-up to the war which Mosley portrays as inevitable because both sides wanted it and were virtually looking for an excuse to fight.
• 
  Margaret

  Julian Grenfell was a young Englishman who died in World War I, having written one of the war's most famous poems, "Into Battle". In this biography, Nicholas Mosley is interested in examining what led Julian, his peers, and his family to believe that to kill and die in war was a desirable, even a splendid, thing.
  
  I see why Persephone reprinted the book. Their focus on women's literature may make this seem an odd choice, a biography of a man by another man, but Mosley spends just as much time on Julian's mother Ettie as he does on Julian, seeing her as the key to Julian's character. He provides a good analysis of the mindset of the times, using Ettie and Julian as his exemplars.
• 
  Stephen

  Moving non-fiction account of a social circle we know from with fiction like Downton Abbey (for nostalgia about a place we never knew) and Evelyn Waugh (for satire) and P.G. Wodehouse (for silliness) and John Buchan (some of whose fictional characters come from it). As the blurb and other reviewers have noted, it examines the death wish that goes with relishing war, a surfeit of God and Country.
• 
  Yooperprof

  One of the best accounts I've ever read of Britain in the twenty years before World War I, particularly focusing upon the mentality of those from the privileged classes who marched gaily and enthusiastically off to war in 1914.