The Dark Tide

Vera Brittain is best known as the author of "Testament of Youth", one of the finest memoirs to come out of the First World War. "The dark tide" is her first novel, written in the early 1920's when she was sharing a flat in London with fellow writer Winifred Holtby, the friend who helped her survive the crushing blows she sustained during the war. The novel is a thinly disguised account of their time at Oxford in 1919. Virginia Dennison (an idealised portrait of Vera) and Daphne Lethbridge (a sometimes cruelly caricatured picture of Winifred) meet as students and spend most of the novel at cross purposes. Their gradual friendship is beautifully described, although some of the incidents of the novel are rather melodramatic. One of the best scenes in the novel- the debate where Virginia feels betrayed and rejected because of her war service- is based on fact, and the scenes of Oxford student life are fascinating. The book was banned at Oxford when it was published as the dons considered that the book brought the college into disrepute. I see it as a fascinating first step in the career of one of the twentieth century's best writers on war and friendship.