The diary that proves Anthony Seldon wrong about the first world war and the public schools

A review of Anthony Seldon and David Walsh’s ‘Public Schools and the Great War’ and ‘Private Lord Crawford’s Great War Diaries’. Crawford’s entries undermine Seldon and Walsh’s rose-tinted view of public school conscripts

From magazine issue: 12 April 2014

(Photo: Getty)

issue 12 April 2014

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Hugh Cecil

The diary that proves Anthony Seldon wrong about the first world war and the public schools
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In March 1915 the 27th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, with an already distinguished political career behind him, took the unorthodox step of enlisting, aged 43, as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps. In 1916 he returned to England from France to take up important government duties, but for 14 months he had been a medical orderly on the Western Front, the only cabinet minister to serve in the ranks in the first world war.