The Choices Of An Etonian: A Novel Horace Buckley First World War

Spine slightly faded, covers slightly marked. With the marginal pencillings of Hugh Cecil, author of The Flower of Battle: British fiction writers of the First World War (1995), and his manuscript notes on the front free endpaper. Horace Henry Clement Buckley (1881-1962), a schoolmaster, served as a lieutenant with the Coldstream Guards during the First World War, the subject of his only other published book, for boys, Great Event (1930). "From the very first [Maurice] suffered untold agonies by being associated with colleagues of uncouth character and ill-disciplined habits. Some of the men were of the class who applied for commissions not because they were inspired by any deep sense of patriotism but because they sought social advantage. It was pleasant to have a cheque book if you had previously only handled a few sovereigns at a time . . . He crawled over the top thinking of Waywode and Conmer; he saw himself taking his place at classical div. at Eton, or strolling leisurely to Call Over. The action of superintending the hammering of wooden posts and affixing refractory barbed wire was part of a routine. This was no special 'stunt' any more than your turn to construe; you simply engaged to do what you were required and the only difference was that you might be killed or wounded."