By the Ghost Light: Wars, Memory, and Families - Softcover

Thomson, R.H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1039008402 ISBN 13: 9781039008403

Verlag: Knopf Canada, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From one of Canada’s most beloved performing artists comes an audacious work of non-fiction that explores the stories that shape us and the reach that the past can have across generations • "Thomson makes visible the ghosts of the Great War, untangling themes of loss and longing, service, and grief." —Tim Cook

Growing up, R.H. Thomson’s imagination was captured by romantic notions of war. He spent his days playing with toy soldiers on the carpet of his grandmother’s house, recreating the Battle of Britain with model planes in his bedroom, or sitting at the local theatre watching World War II B movies.
    Yet Thomson’s childhood was also shaped by the spirits of real-life warriors in his family, their fates a brutal and more complicated reminder of the true human cost of war. Eight of Robert’s great uncles—George, Joe, Jack, Harold, Arthur, Warren, Wildy, and Fred—fought in the First World War, while his great Aunt Margaret served as a wartime surgical nurse in Europe. Five of the great uncles—George, Joe, Fred, Wildy, and Warren—were killed in battle while two others—Jack and Harold—would return home greatly diminished, spending the rest of their lives in and out of sanitariums, their lungs scarred by disease and poison gas. Throughout their lives, the great uncles, as well as great aunts and cousins, were faithful letter writers, their correspondence offering profound insights into their experiences on the front lines to their loved ones back home, a somber record of the sacrifice the family paid.
    In By the Ghost Light, R.H. Thomson offers an extraordinary look at his family’s history while providing a powerful examination of how we understand war and its aftermath. Using his family letters as a starting point, Thomson roams through a century of folly, touching on areas of military history, art, literature, and science, to express the tragic human cost of war behind the calm gravitas of the memorials, and monuments.
    Epic in its scope and incredibly intimate in its exploration of lives touched by the tragedy of war, By the Ghost Light is a truly original book that will challenge the way we approach our history.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

R.H. THOMSON has appeared in film and theatre across Canada, as Matthew Cuthbert in Anne With An E, in the movie Chloe directed by Atom Egoyan, as Marshall McLuhan in The Message by Jason Sherman, and This Was The World by Ellie Moon. As well as being an advocate for the arts, R.H. has worked on many history and arts projects. For the First World War Centenary, he built The World Remembers-Le Monde Se Souvient, an international commemoration exhibit now installed at the Canadian War Museum and explorable online at theworldremembers.org. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and was awarded the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Canada
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1039008402
• ISBN 13: 9781039008403
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 361
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland