- 歌曲
- 时长
Disc1
Disc2
简介
When Geoffrey Boothby was seconded to the Royal Engineers in 1915, he was twenty and Edith Ainscow was seventeen. They had spent only four days together before Geoffrey was sent to the Front and the subterranean struggle below the Ypres Salient, in tunnels that were narrow, dark, flooded, and in deadly danger from the German workings close by. During the next 18 months, while their letters passed to a fro, they fell in love. As Edith wrote her last letter, in May 1916, Geoffrey was due for leave: ‘I can’t really believe that you’re coming yet but I hope and hope and hope. Do, do be careful just for one week . . .’ Arthur Stockwin, Professorial Fellow of St Anthony’s College, Oxford, recently retired from the Directorship of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. He was astonished to find this correspondence, cherished by his late mother since she lost her sweetheart ninety years ago. “The events dramatised in the recording are now nearly a century old. The letters between Geoffrey and Edith, full of the sensitivity and dynamism of youth face to face with the cruelty and inhumanity of war, come down to us through the years as though time had stood still. Our sadness at the outcome is compounded by the fact that a hundred years later wars are still poisoning societies and destroying young people's lives.” Arthur Stockwell