The memory expressed in so many contemporary accounts of England in that last summer of peace was the "picnic-perfect weather".Here's an example via Exeter's Professor Kendell.
This has somehow morphed into an idyllic fantasy of a time when everyone was upper-middle class or above, the boys were handsome and sporty, the girls beautiful and witty with not a care in the world, which would be silly except that, with the benefit of hindsight, we know it is a saner remembrance than thinking about most anything that was to come....MORE
Summer in England, 1914
Alice Meynell
On London fell a clearer light;
Caressing pencils of the sun
Defined the distances, the white
Houses transfigured one by one,
The 'long, unlovely street' impearled.
O what a sky has walked the world!
Most happy year! And out of town
The hay was prosperous, and the wheat;
The silken harvest climbed the down:
Moon after moon was heavenly-sweet,
Stroking the bread within the sheaves,
Looking 'twixt apples and their leaves....
...MORE
