Lyn MacDonald

[terryewalker]

I'm reading at this moment 1914 -1918 Voices and Images of the Great War by Lyn MacDonald well worth the read.

[SMG65]

I find that all Lyn MacDonald's books follow the line that the Generals always made mistakes and the common soldiers suffered. We then get accounts backing up her line. Her books give ammunition to the 'Lions Led By Donkeys' believers.

'1915' was the worst book I have read on the Great War, it doesn't even provoke discussion or argument.

SEAN

[paul guthrie]

All of us in WFA owe a great debt to this lady because of the huge number of people she has introduced to the Great War, also because she took statements from many whose stories, accurate or not, would have been lost.

One does not read her strictly for military history but for what the men were like and what they thought.

She was once nice enough to answer a letter I wrote her, got to like that too.

Yes they are formulaic , so what. Yes 1915 is weak but 1914 is quite good and Somme and Some Called It Passchendale are good enough that I read them six or so times each before I acquired a large WW1 library.

We owe Lyn, big time, probably more than any other author. We will rememeber them... And because of her there are many more of us than there would have been without her.

[Chris Best]

Spot o0n, Paul. The original thread sought a starter book, An initiate won't be interested in depth or accuracy - indeed, such an approach would deter many from further reading.

No, she's telling tales. Soldiers' tales. And as long as the listener understands that old soldiers are no different from any other old whatevers', with the potential for exaggeration, forgetfulness, confusion - great - it's the atmosphere she conjures up.

Chris

[pagius]

I'm pro Lyn MacDonald if only for the many interviews she and her team did with the veterans still alive in the 70s. I have a cassette of her interview with my g-uncle Capt Arthur Agius and she quotes him extensively in 1915 Death of Innocence and The Somme.

[Jon1906]

I'm reading "To the Last Man, Spring 1918" at the moment, and I'm finding it frustrating to the extent of being almost useless from the point of view of a serious researcher. If someone just wants a journalistic-style narrative that's easy to read, I guess it's fine, but it's lacking even the most basic forms of evidence. It has an acknowledgements section in the back, "acknowledging my debt to all of the following, without whose valuable assistance this book could never have been written" and lists several pages of soldiers' names and units... but there is no hint of how they contributed. Were they interviewed? If so when, and by who? This is crucial information if you want to understand any oral history. Was their diary consulted? Does their account come from some other source? There's a world of different between a letter written home during the war and a distant memory recounted in the 1970s, or even maybe it's a second hand account recollected by a family member based on what he/she remembers a relative saying. Who knows!? You can't tell from the book. There are numerous German soldiers quoted in the book, but none of their names appear in the acknowledgements. That list is reserved for allied soldiers only. Presumably all the German accounts come from the work of Richard Baumgartner, who she mentions providing her with German sources, but there's no way to verify which/how many of them actually came from him. She also haphazardly mentions a few other people who helped her in her foreword, but that's the extent of it. Then she weaves together a narrative that is partly quoted material (from where, who knows!) and partly her own words (never providing evidence for where that additional material comes from). Is the extra stuff based on interviews? Secondary sources? War Diaries? What? Is it a paraphrase of words spoken by her witness that she is summarizing to make the narrative smoother? You can't tell. This is especially annoying in sections where I'm pretty familiar with the events, and some of the things she says conflict with what I otherwise know. Is this a mistake? Or does she have other evidence that I haven't seen (and would therefore love to examine)... there's no way to know! 

[Moonraker]

4 minutes ago, Jon1906 said:

...  I'm finding it frustrating to the extent of being almost useless from the point of view of a serious researcher. If someone just wants a journalistic-style narrative that's easy to read, I guess it's fine...

I haven't read the book, but  authors (and their publishers) have to decide what market they're aiming their books at. The less-academic reader may well be put off by copious foot- and end-notes (and we've discussed the respective merits of where notes should be placed).

 

My "starter" books for my specialist subject were N D G James' Gunners at Lark Hill and Plain Soldiering, which gave sources in their end notes that pointed me as a novice to more detail. But there's an old GWF post of 2006 noting, with a touch of disparagement, that "the author [gives] the coordinates for just about every feature in, on and around Salisbury Plain". Invaluable to me, though.

 

There's a book about Wiltshire in WWII that was written to very high academic standards, with 101 pages of source notes. IIRC, one paragraph ended with at least six reference numbers in superscript. Long paragraphs and narrow margins added to the formidability it presented to a prospective reader.

 

Moonraker

 

 

[David Filsell]

I stand happy to be corrected but I understand the author used a number of people to undertake interviews, a number were early members of the WFA. One of the interviewers informed me that the interview material is now at the IWM, but for some reason not available to researchers.  I have never checked the assertion. Others of course might know "different"

[gilbo139]

Moonraker has hit the nail on the head.....( the less academic of us.etc)..... my interest in the Great War was sparked by the Wings series on TV and later all Lyns books , She writes in a way that I find very readable ( I’m an 11 plus failure) and again Moonraker is correct,with too much mention of Battalions,Regiments , Generals etc I find I get bored as what I,m really after is the experiences of those that served. I’ve read almost all the books written by Richard Van Elden and as an unintellectual I feel he writes in much the same way as Lyn did but perhaps in a more factual way. I feel you could find fault with any authors work if you wanted to nitpick. I’ve taken Lyns books with me to F and F and paid my respects at the graves of some of those mentioned in her books and I thank her for her work!

 

[Hedley Malloch]

3 hours ago, Jon1906 said:

I'm reading "To the Last Man, Spring 1918" at the moment, and I'm finding it frustrating to the extent of being almost useless from the point of view of a serious researcher. 

Correct. Read five pages of Lyn and you've read the lot. It's descriptive, with little in the way of analysis or explanation. It's old soldiers' stories repeated ad nauseum. And these are repetitive.

On the other hand, I wish I was £10 behind her.

[Jon1906]

It's not so much the readability that I'm questioning ... it's the accuracy. When there's no way to check one way or the other, it might as well be treated as historic fiction. A great read, set amidst true events, but containing who knows how much invention.

Edited 9 May , 2019 by Jon1906

[gilbo139]

Ha, I see and I agree about invention, some of my old work colleagues tell stories about incidents I attended and I know they’re fabricating what went on !! My latest second hand book was full of photographs, one had the caption.....the town of Loos in Belgium ......perhaps Peter Barton and Jeremy Banning do it better but unless you,ve studied The Great War in depth ,who knows if people are being accurate with their writing , regards Colin

[Moonraker]

Again, we've discussed the validity of primary sources, including oral history (often rendered decades after the events described) before.

 

In post 8 of

 

this thread

 

I concede that my memory played me false after just 12 years. And on Friday I visited the site of Devizes Wireless Station and couldn't recall seeing on previous visits bolster-shaped pieces of concrete; when I returned home I looked at some 2002 photos - one of which was of them! (Fourth pic down in post 46.)

 

Given that many events described in oral history happened a long time ago and in extremely stressful circumstances, it's only right that we should treat reminiscences with caution.

 

Moonraker

[Uncle George]

I was so moved by this photograph and caption from the ‘Observer’ (of 13 November 1983) that I cut it out, and have kept it all these years. Lyn Macdonald: