Dulce et decorum: ‘The German Ward’ and ‘And in the Morning’

Resumen detallado

Pip Williams’ constrained yet passionate novel set on the fringes of WWI and Lenny Robinson’s three haunting stories of women and war from the home front ...

There are many startling and beautiful sentences in The German Ward, the new novel by internationally acclaimed writer Pip Williams. One such sentence is this: “I had no answer then, and I have no answer now, but there is confidence in meanness, even if it is momentary.”

Meanness. It is a quiet word but perfectly applied in this novel about the results of catastrophic meanness. The setting is the French seaside town of Étaples, 1916, and the British field hospitals established for the wounded of World War I – including German soldiers. The building where they are housed is known as the German ward.

Tilda Taylor, a Red Cross volunteer nurse, has been sent to the German ward as penance, after a senior nurse noted that: “She is too independent; she does not wait for instructions; she is wont to argue; her hair is barely contained; she wears rouge and occasionally lipstick, against regulation.

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