As Vera Brittain’s Life of her companion Winifred Holtby is republished, Mark Bostridge examines the friendship between two timeless writers.

When she returns to school after the war, the beginning of a lifelong and important friendship with fellow student, writer, feminist and socialist Winifred Holtby (Alexandra Roach) is glossed over.

Director James Kent brings the camera in ever closer as the film progresses, for it’s evident that this Testament of Youth speaks a truly cinematic language.

Holtby landed a book deal first; Brittain produced an international bestseller with Testament of Youth; and the letters, written from 1920 to 1935, show them negotiating envy and self-doubt.

At the centre of this episode is the story of Vera Brittain, author of the ever-popular memoirs, Testament of Youth and Testament of Friendship.

If Holtby is heard of these days, the reason—apart from PBS—is likely to be her long friendship with Vera Brittain, in whose estimable memoir of World War I bereavement, "Testament of Youth ...

Winifred Holtby (23 June 1898 – 29 September 1935) came from a farming family in Yorkshire, met Vera Brittain at Oxford University and shared a house in London as they began their careers as ...

There, her friend Winifred Holtby (Alexandra Roach), who would herself go on to an illustrious literary career, gently observes that she is not alone: “All of us are surrounded by ghosts, now we ...

Holtby, feminist writer and anti-war propagandist, is perhaps best known now as the subject of Vera Brittain's Testament of Friendship.

Later, there is her friendship with Winifred Holtby when she returns to Oxford after the war. A marvellous, emotionally engaging literary autobiography.

As Vera Brittain’s Life of her companion Winifred Holtby is republished, Mark Bostridge examines the friendship between two timeless writers.