World War I · Film · 2014
Testament of Youth
Vera Brittain fights her family for a place at Oxford, then leaves it to nurse the wounded as the war takes, one by one, the young men she loves.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 4 places.
Stop 1: Buxton, Derbyshire
Against her father's wishes, Vera prepares for the Oxford entrance exam and falls for her brother's school friend Roland.
Stop 2: Somerville College, Oxford
Vera starts at Oxford while Roland, Edward and Victor put on uniforms, and the casualty lists in the newspapers grow longer.
Stop 3: Military hospital in London
Nursing wounded soldiers, Vera waits for Roland's Christmas leave and a telephone call changes everything.
Stop 4: Étaples base hospitals
Key location
Posted to France, Vera is assigned to a ward of wounded Germans, then finds her own brother among the casualties brought in.
What really happened
The film adapts Vera Brittain's 1933 memoir, one of the best-known British accounts of the war. She won a place at Somerville College, Oxford, in 1914, then left in 1915 to serve as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in Buxton, London, Malta and France, where at Étaples she nursed German prisoners.
Her fiancé Roland Leighton died of a sniper's wound at Louvencourt on 23 December 1915; their friend Victor Richardson was blinded at Arras and died in June 1917; her brother Edward was killed on the Asiago plateau in Italy on 15 June 1918. The film leaves out her posting in Malta. After the war Brittain became a prominent pacifist.
Where to watch
Checking streaming services…
Full details
- Original title
- Testament of Youth
- Directed by
- James Kent
- Countries
- United Kingdom
- Languages
- English
- Released
- 2014
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Biography
- True story
- Home front
- Romance
