Vera Brittain

Brittain was born in 1893, and grew up in comfort in Macclesfield and Buxton. In 1914, just as war was breaking out, she won an exhibition to Somerville College, Oxford. The following year she interrupted her studies to enrol as a VAD nurse. In 1933 she published "Testament of Youth" which inscribed her name into the public's mind. She wrote extensively thereafter, and devoted her life to the causes of peace and feminism.