
BookTalk returned for the 2016/17 academic year to look at David Jones’s First World War classic, In Parenthesis (1937) in an event commemorating the centenary year of the Battle of the Somme. Considered ‘the greatest book about the First World War’ by W. H. Auden, In Parenthesis recalls the experiences of Private John Ball and his comrades in the Royal Welch Fusiliers from their embarkation for the Somme to their participation in the Mametz Wood assault. For this event, we partnered with the Welsh National Opera and the Voices of War and Peace project to deliver an evening’s discussion around the challenges of reworking the text for opera. Our speakers for the evening were David Antrobus, Beth McIntyre, and Dr Toby Thacker.
You can read the posts for the event below: