Testament Of Youth

Director: James Kent
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, Dominic West, Emily Watson

Originally published in 1933 – and rediscovered by a generation of feminists in the 1970s – Vera Brittain’s Testament Of Youth is an autobiographical account of the devastation wreaked by World War I.

This lavish adaptation by BBC Films shows how spirited young Vera (Vikander, Anna Karenina) breaks free from the conventions of her class and gender to go to Oxford, only to have her brother (Egerton) and fiancé (Harington, Game Of Thrones) torn from her by the outbreak of hostilities.

She then heads for the front as a field nurse, experiencing the horror of war first hand. Eventually Vera returns to Oxford, a grieving woman in a shell-shocked country. Testament Of Youth is not just a heartbreaking love story, but also a corrective to the myth that only men fight wars.